Reverse
by Quagga
Summary: The Cetra want to change the past, and Sephiroth’s punishment is to be the one that changes it for them. AU. Cloud/Sephiroth, Zack/Aerith.
1. Chapter 1

Reverse

_AKA yet another FFVII time-traveling fix-it fic. _

**Fandom**: Final Fantasy VII

**Author:** Quagga

**Pairings**: Cloud/Sephiroth, Zack/Aerith, and various other potential combinations of those four.

**Rating**: M; contains or will contain graphic violence, angst, wangst, mindfuckery, possibly mild sexual content, etc.

**Summary**: The Cetra want to change the past, and Sephiroth's punishment is to be the one that changes it for them. AU. (Cloud/Sephiroth, Zack/Aerith).

**Note**: Based on original game canon.

**Chapter One**

At first, nothing.

Then a sudden burst of light, splintering like broken glass and cutting jagged holes through his consciousness without remorse, then utter icy cold, then the gates that held back the fury of the flood broke open and he drowned in a sea of rage and sorrow and anger and sadness and _hatred_, deeper and colder and more staggering than everything else, embroiled within the rush of emotion and raw feeling, pulling him down, sinking him, choking him, _ending _him, then over.

Nothing again.

Then hands held before his face, blood and scraps of black congealing between fingers, skin melting away from bone, bone splintering and falling before him, and everything now melting away before he could even scream. A flash of something in the darkness, beyond the darkness, iridescent and oddly illuminated blue eyes looking down at him with an oddly flat mingling of rage, sorrow, disbelief, pity, and yes, certainly hatred, and then there was nothing again, stretching in all directions towards forever, like there had never been anything, and everything was dark.

Dark, maybe, but there was still sensation. The ringing in his head intensified enough for him to finally notice it, and the aching in his limbs worsened enough for him to notice that he had limbs. Vocal chords seemed to constrict. Muscles twitched, expanded, contracted, and then went limp. Soon everything was still again but for his insides, and with his stomach twisting into knots he realized -- or maybe remembered -- that he had a stomach, had lungs, had a heart somewhere in there, had bodily functions that seemed normal and yet entirely forgotten. When he drew his first breath, though, even the air seemed to shatter into a thousand crystalline and cold shards that scythed through his lungs like a sword.

Yes, a sword -- covered in red, covered in blood, raised over his head, then he tasted blood, fell, and then it was darkness again.

At last -- nothing.

* * *

But then he stared mindlessly forth into the cosmos, a night sky full of stars and planets and little drifting things about to be consumed, endlessly dark and vast, spreading in every direction. Even if his eyes took in the universe, they were nothing but mirrors reflecting pinpoints of life, sensing without seeing, seeing without understanding, processing it without true awareness. Existing without consciousness -- still nothing -- but then he was aware, thinking, realizing that it was the clearest sky he had ever seen. Disjointed thoughts started to come together, and as soon as they did, there was that awareness again. If his body really could be called a body, it was being destroyed.

Wounded without bleeding, maybe, but something sank into him and started sucking everything out, relentless. A billion points of light, a billion tiny creatures crawling over him, a billion tiny lights in a million tiny homes and a billion little parasites drawing away energy and replacing it with something seething, a million voices screaming all at once until his head cracked open and everything bubbled and sizzled on its way out, desiccating him until he was nothing more than an empty husk of something that had once been.

Then it was all stinging cold and familiarity. Green, burning fluorescent green, freezing his insides and rendering him motionless, nothing but green all around, holding him in stasis -- green, terrible, terrible green, burning, seething, bubbling, stinging green, and yet he wanted it to stay because he knew ripping it out of him was going to rip out his insides. It didn't stay. Ripped out of him, sudden and brutally, and the green disappeared and left what felt like a million shards of broken green inside of him, like green was a knife, a sword, or a needle. He choked. He might have tried screaming with vocal chords that didn't work. He definitely felt a rush, felt knees crack against a hard surface, felt his head smack against the ground, and felt his muscles begin seizing and his spine arching and curling at a nearly impossible angle and his muscles tensing until they began to tear -- before finally, _finally_, a more familiar stillness came again.

He recognized this kind of still silence, called it exhaustion, and kept his eyes closed.

A second later something bludgeoned him, and he heard a crack before feeling the burst of pain and sliding down, breath knocked out of his body when he wasn't even aware it had been there in the first place. He choked for it, longing for the return of what he didn't know he'd had and now missed, but before he could suck air back in another blow knocked it right out of him. Instinct saved him where rational thought couldn't. On his knees, now, looking at nothing and anticipating, crouched down defensively even if he felt nakedly defenseless, gritting teeth that felt like they rattled in his head, almost snarling at nothingness -- and then he heard laughter.

Many voices as one, but all in unison – they were all laughing, and definitely at him. Laughter didn't faze him. Helplessness did. He looked all around, seeing nothing, and yet he could still hear it, getting louder and louder with each passing moment, more and more infuriating. He tried to shout something, but his vocal chords constricted and he choked, reaching up to grab at his throat now and then coughing. Each cough expelled a fine green mist that curled into visible tendrils and disappeared without illuminating the darkness. He couldn't even see his own hands before him, but he could hear their laughter increase, more and more the more he choked and struggled, before coming to an abrupt end.

**Well met, little one. Well met. **

Reverberating, echoing, booming, the voice flattened him, but when he covered his ears it grew louder, intensifying until he writhed with each word, worsening when beyond the voice he heard more laughter.

**However, it's a very futile effort. We can flatten you with a single breath. Don't bother resisting. **

Still echoing, the voice of a million, of legion, so immense it seemed like his hands pressing into both sides of his skull were the only thing keeping his head together before it swelled and exploded from the force of it. Vibrating, shattering everything, rocking him right down to the roots of his teeth and the marrow in his bones -- ripping him apart from inside out and breaking him piece by piece, yet with a kind of ease and nonchalance he couldn't hope to fight against. But he couldn't keep from resisting -- his body tried to resist it, every nerve and cell rebelling and only making the pain intensify. Finally, his consciousness shattered to pieces, splitting into a million shards, and even if his vocal chords didn't work, he screamed in his head until he couldn't scream anymore. Without strength now, he remained at the mercy of the voice.

**We see no reason for affording you mercy or compassion,** the voice mused, in a tone that sounded almost idle, even vaguely congenial. **You have forfeited the right to it, though the usefulness of your existence is apparent, even to us. **

Even instinctive resistance ebbed away, now, leaving him a raw bundle of splintered nerves that twitched on each syllable. The owners of the voice didn't particularly seem to care. They spoke without any kind of urgency or necessity, only what seemed to be a kind of amused sadism, increasing until he finally understood that their chief purpose, now, was just to torture him.

**Useful though you are, it is crucial that we do not allow you to forget. We cannot forgive you, either -- the time for that, unfortunately, has passed. The time for any number of things has passed, actually. Compassion. Understanding. **_**Helplessness**_**. It is time to make a move. Be glad that we find you useful. **

His mouth kept on moving, trying to form words of his own, though the reverberations had him writhing and his vocal chords seemed frozen, locking him in a kind of silent hell. Not like words would have tempered the seething anger he heard behind that casual amusement and sadistic glee, but the growing confusion cut to the bone along with the pain, and with it came panic. That set off a round of other emotions, as well -- panic faded, something close to rage bubbled up and overwhelmed him, and adrenaline-rush resistance returned, lashing out at his surroundings with fury even if he couldn't even move his limbs. The voice was in him, all around him, and definitely not blind to his thoughts.

**Just understand -- there is no one we can't break. **

They drove into him, twisted him, tore him from the insides, and broke him.

**Again. The time for mercy has long since passed.**

**

* * *

  
**

No clear view of the cosmos this time, but something mundane -- darkness in his surroundings, but light surrounding his own body, enough for him to look down and see that he was naked and defenseless, cocooned in strands of phosphorous green that kept him motionless and seared against his skin. Confusion, rage, and panic supplanted his exhaustion quickly, but the emotions exploded in a quick flare and dissipated before they could give rise to anything. He closed his eyes for a moment, before squinting up into the light, thinking that perhaps he could see something in it. Nothing. It burned, though, so it was easier just to close his eyes and wait, exhausted beyond limits. All of this seemed oddly familiar. Strands of insanely glowing green instead of leather or metal straps, a bright light with no discernible source and yet still a spotlight, naked, helpless, defenseless -- it beckoned to some kind of memory, but his mind felt too fragmented to try to piece it together.

"You're still in pieces, aren't you?"

A voice, strange, echoing, multi-layered, yet comprehensible -- multiple voices speaking at once, but it no longer shook him to the core. He opened his eyes. Another spotlight shone down on a man, and seeing the man's face jolted something out of his memories, pulling up the first recognizable fragment. He knew that face, black hair, sun-tanned and blue-eyed, but the voice coming out of its mouth wasn't recognizable. Something else was off, and while his mind struggled to rationalize it, the figure seemed to fade in and fade out, even blurring entirely sometimes. It was like a television set, struggling with a weak signal, cutting in and out, and then it seemed like someone was intentionally tampering with the image -- the eyes brightened then darkened, then the hair and clothes, size and shape, shifting and changing, uncertainly. Finally, he squinted and it solidified a little more, taking a step towards him.

"Don't be alarmed by my appearance. This place relies only on recognition, and will change depending upon the images in your own mind. Though I wonder why there's nothing else here -- have you forgotten everything?"

He opened his mouth to speak. Nothing came out, and the figure smiled -- a quirk of one lip that was all wrong, entirely empty.

"Never matter. As I said before, we will not allow you to forget. You are most useful to us with your memories intact, Jenova's child."

There it was, a name -- and his throat started constricting and limbs started shaking. Confined and helpless, he watched the figure fade and something appear all around him. The cold machinery of a mako reactor, always slick with mist rising up from the core, where it reached right into the lifeblood of the Planet. The thrust of a sword, final and climactic, piercing a black-haired man's chest and then whipping him away with a scornful lack of effort. A town burning somewhere in the mountains. The burning haze of the lifestream. A girl falling, pierced through by the silver sword, a small materia orb slipping out of her hair. Blue eyes, strange hair, gleaming sword, blood on the sword, blood congealing between his hands, and the metallic taste of blood in his mouth -- yes, all of these were memories, fragments ripped from his mind and strewn before him, but none of them made sense. As he watched, a deep and sickening exhaustion began sinking into him. When he dared close his eyes against the onslaught, though, an electric and yet ice-cold surge of pain jerked him back to alertness, arching his body against its restraints and scything through his insides, forcing his eyes open again, to watch the rest, to watch and watch and watch, over and over, until it began to change. With every thrust of the sword, he felt metal inside of him, scraping bone and slicing organs as if they were nothing, twisting, then slipping out, one clear, simple stroke. Different places every time, never exact, never precise, but blood bubbled up and curled in his throat, mingled with sickly mako bile, choking him until he twitched, twisted, writhed, and jerked against his restraints.

But it gave him understanding, when before there had been none -- and with understanding, he could calmly endure the agony. .

"You must understand, now." The figure was back, nothing more than the barest hint of a shadow -- then it was _him_, looking down, silver-haired and mako-eyed, wearing the same clothes as in memory, holding that sword. No more blurring or shifting, perhaps because he was center stage in his own mind, now.

"Yes." For the first time, he could speak, though it came out as nothing more than a sick rasp. It didn't really seem to matter.

"You're an enemy to so very many people, and for so many reasons, they will never forgive you. They cannot forget you, either. Hatred is more binding, far more permanent than love. In a thousand years, the hatred will still remain. This... cannot be so. It is not what we desire." Seeing him so defenseless, naked, and helpless, it noticed as soon as he felt it -- odd and almost unconscious, deep-seated satisfaction -- and sudden frigid stab somewhere inside exploded into a ripple of agony and a full-blown assault, punishing him for an impulse he couldn't avoid. This time he heard his own screams, then heard his own desperate scrabbling against his bonds in an attempt to escape, knowing all the while that it was impossible.

"You dare to find satisfaction in being remembered, but not in remembering. So we have decided that _you _will be forgotten."

"...Ancients," he finally muttered, almost nonsensically. The figure smiled down at him, a slight quirk of the lips.

"Yes, Jenova's Child. It is so. We are Cetra, the Ancients, rightful heirs to this planet."

"I am..."

"You are nothing. Parasitic, foreign, _nothing_. But... you are useful. You are ours."

Foolish old arrogance flared up again. "I am no one's."

When he was done screaming this time, the Cetra seemed like a shadow again, its shape almost discernible but for the faint illumination coming from above, more an outline than something corporeal. He forced his eyes open and looked towards it, trembling so badly he could barely focus. When the trembling ceased, the shadow seemed to take a shape again, responding to his thoughts and coming fully formed right out of nightmares. Professor Hojo stood before him, as clear as day, though the fact that it spoke with the voice of the Cetra quelled most of his immediate revulsion.

"You are ours. Eternally, now -- there is no mercy, and no end or beginning for you. You are only ours."

Resignation felt incredibly foreign to him, but enough pain and here it was, crushing him under its weight. "...What do you want with me?"

The figure flickered and faded, becoming a shadow once more. His vision seemed to be blurring, too, fading and blinking out, though the coice of the Cetra cut through even his wavering consciousness, not half-so-loud as before but still shaking him right down to the core.

"Though you are nothing more than a parasite, you can be used. We wish to achieve one goal, and to do so, the course of events must be changed. Time bends and shifts in all directions. We will take advantage of the flow of time, and return you to the origin of all that went wrong."

"...You... can control time...?"

"No. That is beyond us." He'd struck a nerve, somehow, and the Cetra's anger coiled through him, burningly acidic, though compared to the intense reverberations and their unmasked wrath, it was nothing more than a mild discomfort. "We merely ride the flow of time, backwards and forwards, through use of the Lifestream. But our abilities are sufficient for the task we hope to achieve."

"...And that is...?" Questions, questions, so many questions -- and he was too weak to ask most of them. Instead he forced his eyes to remain open and watched the shadow, still trembling and struggling for breath but slowly growing calmer as the leftover energy from the Cetra's wrath began to fade to merely an unsettling background hum.

"We will create a new future."

Perhaps they sensed his doubt, maybe even a touch of scorn -- because they bludgeoned him again, and though it smacked the breath out of his lungs in one quick burst and he let out a choking cry, it was more like an after-thought. By the time he opened his eyes, though, he felt the chilling rush and began dropping. Falling through endless currents of darkness, then feeling his teeth grind together, his knees crack against a hard surface, and his cheekbone smack wetly and crack against a hard floor -- concrete, rough and grainy, but definitely real, recognizable concrete.

He jerked up his head, looking around and finding the darkness suddenly not so inexplicable anymore. He was in a building, surrounded by the looming shadows of machinery cast by dim lights in the high corners of the room. Nighttime, here -- past working hours. Shinra HQ's research floors were quiet and still as a morgue, though as soon as he recognized where he was he lurched to his feet and made for the elevator, trying to escape almost impulsively. Before he passed through the doors, though, a webbing of green lifestream wrapped across the entrance, barring him. He stepped back, and heard their voice again -- distant, but he could sense the coiling anger.

_"No. That is not your path."_

"Then where?" He hissed, irritably. "_When_ is this?"

_"To the cells in back. You will see."_

The cells -- he turned and lurched down the hall in silence. His cheek throbbed for a few seconds, then the pain faded as the wound knit itself back together, leaving nothing but a bloodstain on his face. He didn't bother wiping it off, instead continuing, winding through the narrow halls before reaching the tiny, dimly lit corridor in back, where a row of prison cells lined the walls. He glanced inside most and saw nothing, but paused at the last cell, peering in and really, truly understanding for the first time.

_"You are in the right place. Now act."_

The voice strained, and he wondered if this was all some kind of sick illusion. It didn't matter if it was, so he dismissed it before putting his hands to the bars and pulling them apart as if they were nothing and giving little thought to it. When he stepped inside and looked down, though, his understanding of the situation wavered once more. This felt real. The clinging humidity inside of the lab, created by the thick mako mist floating around the specimen tubes, the dim lights and the twisted shadows they cast across the machinery, the distant rumblings of Midgar below, the sterile scent of equipment and the slight damp of every surface under his hands, all of it was pitch-perfect and picture-perfect. It didn't feel like a mere memory. Memories, even his, dealt in fragments, fudged details.

"_This is as you think it is -- reality. Look around you."_

He did. The tiny cell had a single bed, a sink, some books stacked in a neat pile on the floor. It also had an occupant -- a small boy, sleeping, face framed by silver hair, troubled, clutching his blankets around him with thin, pale fingers, trembling on occasion. Convinced now this was the past, but entirely unimpressed, he cocked his head and arched his eyebrows.

"What am I supposed to do?"

A prickle of pain again, and though the anger of the Cetra felt distant, he had little doubt they could put him through the wall again and tear him to pieces, if the need became clear. He didn't so much as cringe, but he did frown, just a little. Their voice came out as a hiss.

_"This is where it begins -- you must ensure that you are forgotten."_

Looking at the boy struggle to sleep and clutch his blankets gave rise to a slow, building discomfort. "Should I take him?"

_"Yes. Give him an escape, the one true path. Salvage what is left of his innocence."_

The Cetra, he realized, were being purposely vague, as if they really were giving him some kind of choice -- but he saw through their ploy and recognized it for what it was. His surroundings were no illusion, but they were still trying to weave one through words, hoping to ensnare him and catch him in an obvious foible. There was no guaranteeing that they wouldn't just destroy him in the end, anyway, but the fresh memory of the agonies they could force him into kept him from falling pray to it and enduring their punishment. It was probably futile to begin with -- no matter what path he chose, they were intent on punishing him.

"...I understand."

His words actually woke the boy up, jerked him out of his sleep. Bleary mako eyes cracked open, then sharpened and turned to him, wide with confusion. The boy, no older than seven, sat up sharply and stared.

"W...Who are you?" The boy asked, his voice thin and high, though he still seemed a little groggy from the remnants of sleep. The two of them merely looked at one another, for the longest time -- or what felt like it. Burning eyes, stripped of their genetic hue and now the color of mako, coupled with the same silvery hair, the same ice-pale skin, the same odd cat-slit pupils, all looking up at him, but set in a younger face that lacked the careful discipline that rigorous training would soon carve out of that childish curiosity and vitality.

_"Well?"_ The Cetra asked, their voice now a poison, twisting through his innards again.

"Are you... here to... are you going to take me downstairs to the lab, or...take me somewhere else?" The boy asked, the last part so hesitant that it almost edged out the little bit of childish hopefulness in it.

"Yes," Sephiroth said, for no reason at all, his fingers closing around a familiar hard pommel -- and with a single swift thrust, he impaled the boy on the edge of the sword now in his hands, pinning the child to the wall behind him. He tried to make it a clean strike right through the heart, but the boy moved at the last moment and it went through a lung, crookedly, scraping his spine instead. He knew, because he felt it -- and as soon as the tip of the blade touched the wall he fell to his knees, shuddering, choking, and clutching at his own chest, before forcing his head upright.

The boy just looked at him for one long moment, his eyes wide and glassy and his mouth open. Sephiroth withdrew the sword and felt it in his own insides, now on his knees. The boy remained upright for perhaps five agonizing seconds, before finally, the mako glare in his eyes seemed to fade a little -- it wasn't as bright as it would be later, and he was still growing into the monster he would later become. Vulnerable, for just a few more years -- but now that meant nothing. The boy fell, eyes still open, blood gushing from a seeping hole in his chest. A last crisp rattle of air leaving his lungs broke the silence, and then he died.

Sephiroth stood above the corpse for a moment, staring -- then his vision turned to bright bursts of light, another bludgeon -- the intense wrath of the planet, but _worse_ this time, twisting and curling through him until it bubbled over into more screams and he bit his tongue and tasted bitter metallic blood in the back of his throat. It occurred to him as soon as it was over that it wasn't anger, not this time -- the shadowy figure of the Cetra wore his own face again, only with exhilaration written all over it.

"Why punish me? I did as you asked," Sephiroth managed to rasp out, earning another invisible blow that slammed him into an invisible wall, then sliding down -- and more laughter, high and insane, all in unison -- enough to send him keeling over and clutching his head again. It trailed off quickly, though, and when he looked up, the Cetra just stared back at him with his own eyes, now completely flat.

"We do not need any more reasons to punish. The acts you have already committed are unforgivable."

He stared, before straightening up, unsure of whether the burning he felt inside was rage, or -- something inexplicable, especially for him -- fear. He kept on expecting to vanish, or for his memories to disappear suddenly, or for everything to fall apart -- or maybe for him to find himself alone in a cell at night, breathing his last breath -- but nothing changed.

"Don't worry," though the Cetra seemed pleased to see that he was worrying. "Even after killing that child, you will continue to exist, and so will all of your memories. If you think you've done more than simply scratched the surface of our plans for you, you have a far poorer understanding of reality than I could have imagined. We are creating an alternate timeline, one from which you have been erased. This is just the beginning."

"...I don't understand," he murmured, the words bizarre, foreign on his tongue.

"Of course you don't. But you've successfully completed your first task, and can now continue to work for us," the Cetra said with an empty smile. Before Sephiroth could speak -- demand an explanation even when he didn't have the power to demand anything of anyone, or simply ask why -- the Cetra's wrath flowed through him again, flattening him to the ground effortlessly and beginning to rip into him, physically, mentally, maybe even spiritually. It broke him as easily as the spread of a ripple over a pure, calm surface of water -- and as he endured it in helpless silence, he began to understand his punishment.

_TBC_

**author's notes**

1. This story might be completely nonsensical now, but it might make more sense in coming chapters… I hope. I really have no gauge of whether I'm writing an actual story or unintelligible dreck that only makes sense to me.

2. One of a million fics with a time-travel plot device, I know, but I don't read much FFVII fiction at all, so hopefully this one isn't just a retelling of some other, better fic out there.

3. If you read this far, please leave a review. I loooooooove feedback of all shapes and sizes. The next chapter will be posted soon.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter Two **

For a long time, Sephiroth lingered in the darkness, no longer bound in place by anything -- but with nowhere to go, either. Sometimes he thought he could make out shapes around him, but reaching towards them was futile. His legs seemed weak, his body felt broken, and he still shivered, deep down, from the onslaught of rage and exhilaration the Cetra mercilessly foisted upon him.

There was an illusion of time passing, but even if he counted the number of breaths he drew or listened to his heartbeat, he couldn't keep track of it. Soon he tried to think of nothing at all, although that, too, was impossible. Simply choosing not to think might have been the easiest path, but the paths he chose, it seemed, were never the easy ones.

Footsteps approached, after a time. Sephiroth lifted his head and slowly curled into a sitting position, thinking perhaps he'd see his own death again. Memories seemed to be splitting and converging inside of his head - of being seven years old, sitting up, seeing a man cloaked in black before him, and then getting a sword thrust through his chest, or being seven years old, sitting up with an odd sensation, but seeing nothing and falling back to sleep, eventually. He kept on reliving it, over, and over -- but as soon as he saw the Cetra, the contradiction in his mind (_Did I_ _live or die on that night?_) faded away. There really _wasn't _much of a contradiction. His memories -- his real memories -- continued on the same path, towards more training and conditioning, towards Wutai, towards Nibelheim, towards the Northern Crater.

"You're wondering how it can be possible that you killed yourself, and yet are still alive now." The Cetra said, smiling now with the face of a girl only vaguely familiar to him. Sephiroth just stared, and the Cetra continued, anyway, sounding satisfied with himself.

"It seems two time lines now exist, a situation which we must eventually resolve. For now, though, there are other matters to which we must attend."

"…What do you want me to do next?"

"Try not to sound so impatient. You will never be rid of us," The Cetra intoned, calmly, the voice of thousands coming out of the mouth of one girl, studying him with green eyes set in a pale face. Those eyes, though a natural shade devoid of the artificial mako hue, seemed flat and deadened. It was an almost exceptionally poor imitation, possibly because his recollection of the girl was so dim. Seeing his look, the Cetra smiled again. "There is another point in time to visit. Things proceeded from the day you died, murdered in your sleep by unknown forces. A worthless experiment. A waste of millions of dollars spent altering you in the womb, and nurturing you until the age of seven – if you could even call it nurture. Ensuring that you'd be something different... special, in some way."

He didn't like the Cetra's sneer, especially how unnatural it looked on the girl's face. "...I can't imagine anyone was heartbroken."

"Of course not. At that point, few knew of anything but a rumor of your existence. Nonetheless, the effects of a single person's death at a single point in time are profound. You had to have realized that, when you killed me," the Cetra said, unconvincingly, and Sephiroth tipped his head slightly, looking at his captor with carefully controlled disdain.

"You can't convince me you're the girl. You don't even look like her."

"And yet Aerith is one of us, and you never were. But because you claimed to be, her mere existence invalidated your entire world. You knew both of you couldn't live in the world at once." The Cetra took a step towards him, and he tried not to visibly recoil. He could sense their anger and hatred mingling into pure thirst for carnage right now, all directed towards him.

"...But now she exists, and I don't."

"Yes. You will now return to a single point in time and ensure that she continues to exist. She is necessary for our plans."

"...She's one of you." He muttered. "What role does she have in this? Is she seeking revenge against me, too?"

"Again, you understand so little. She is sweet, good-natured. Kind."

He was starting to see something that he should have noticed a while ago, here. "Clearly, nothing like the rest of you."

The Cetra just stood, smiling at him, and when the intense bludgeoning came, he half-expected it. Bracing his muscles against the pain was impossible, though -- it was inside and outside all at once, pressing him down and tearing him outwards, striking him and making him flinch mightily with each blow until he cringed reflexively in anticipation. It stopped. Instinctively, he let his guard down -- then it ripped into him again, taking him raw and defenseless. When the pain receded, he forced his eyes open again and looked towards the Cetra. Just a shadow, now, but soon they took on his own face again.

"You're worse than an animal. Almost criminally lacking in self-introspection."

He said nothing to that, not that his insides felt steady enough or he had the breath to even manage speaking.

"Now, go. The flow of time continues onwards, and allows us few opportunities to waste."

"...Does she even know anything about this, then?" He asked, but they struck him almost lazily and he began falling again, his insides rushing and churning even more than last time. The sudden stop at the end wasn't half so bad, though. He landed on his back, arched in pain, then rolled over on sparse, rocky ground, feeling a wound in his head open and gush blood then knit together in the time it took for his vision to stop spinning before him. Cold wind whipped around him, but the air felt dry, cold, and clear, far removed from the lab, but almost as familiar. He coughed a few times, grabbed at his throat, then rolled into a sitting position, slowly. Stars stretched from horizon to horizon, but a crescent moon hung low in the sky, half-tinted blood red. When he lowered his gaze from the chilling expanse of the sky, he saw the twisted, craggy spires of the Nibel Mountains looming before him.

"_She is here. Hojo has taken her. Eliminate everyone that breathes inside the laboratory, save her, and ensure that Nibelheim still burns,"_ the voice said, now distant, and Sephiroth narrowed his eyes before slowly getting to his feet – clad in black again, and with his sword in hand, suddenly curious to as why, exactly, the Cetra thought he was so much worse than they were.

**

* * *

**

Her fist connected solidly with the solid glass window, but a moment later she was seated again, shaking a smarting hand back and forth and biting her lower lip in an effort not to cry out. Trying to punch out the glass, she now realized -- and should have realized before -- was just a very _stupid _move, particularly when she knew very well that it was bulletproof. Still, something close to panic was doing its best to get the best of her, pressuring her when the better inclination would have been to just sit silently, towards the back of the chamber, and try to wait this one out.

But with the lights out, the lab was frightening. Only a dim glow coming from the command console nearby and the red glare of the emergency exit lights remained to cast shadows, and those shadows danced around lab instruments and equipment that looked even more surreal in the darkness. Distant alarm sounds echoed up from the lower floors, and even more distantly, she thought she heard high, desperate screams.

Aerith tried covering her ears, but blocking out the screams of humans only made the planet's cries of agony louder, so in the end she huddled down in the corner of the glass chamber, sitting, watching, and waiting. Nothing moved in the lab unless she imagined it, and sometimes, when it got dark like this, imagination was enough to bring even the shadows to life. Aerith remembered something from her childhood, a distant murmur --

_Be brave, Aerith. Be brave. _

-- Her mother's voice, from before her return to the Planet. Sometimes, among the immense and concentrated voice of the Lifestream, she thought she could still hear her mother, but it was hard to be sure. Right now she was surrounded by nothing but cold glass and metal, removed from the living earth, and Aerith had never felt more utterly alone.

But she wasn't going to be scared, even if the lights had never been out for this long before. Aerith clenched her fists tightly and waited, trying to remain resolute even in the face of shadows, knowing that even if _something _was happening, it had to be better than remaining in here, amidst the cool shatter-proof glass and lifeless metal. Minutes ticked by, and now the noises coming from below were getting closer and louder, more easily identifiable as being screams of senseless, almost animalistic terror. Dying sounds. Aerith sat and lowered her eyes, trying to distance herself -- thinking of air and earth and trees and _Zack_, knowing full well that even imagination couldn't stop the nameless horror of her surroundings from making itself known, and soon. Oddly, her fear lessened as the minutes passed.

She had long ago realized that everything both began and ended in the Lifestream. Her own life was no different than the rest of the humans on the planet, even if many of them only distantly sensed what she had always been intimately acquainted with; the Lifestream was neither pretty mysticism or a myth, and the lives of individuals were nothing more than tiny blips among an infinite surge of life and energy. Knowing that somehow blunted what would have been a much sharper fear, particularly as the high and horrible screams of lab technicians and guards below came closer. They weren't more than a single floor away from her, now. Thoughts of her own mortality were fleeting. The Lifestream, as chillingly impersonal and frightening as it sometimes could be, was eternal.

_Unless..._

She thought of Shinra's mako reactors again, and had to suppress a shudder. She had always sensed it -- a great and brewing anger, one that extended back beyond her own lifetime -- an anger that had been building ever since the first mako reactor had plunged into the subsurface and drawn out the very lifeblood of the planet. Aerith knew that one day, that anger would bubble over into something catastrophic.

Another scream punctuated her thoughts, and she wondered if perhaps it already _had._ She could sense anger now, and it made her tremble.

A movement at the corner of her field of vision alerted her, and Aerith looked up just in time to see the white-cloaked body of a lab technician come flying through the open door way, propelled by some unseen force. He hit the ground like a limp rag doll and skidded, and even in the darkness, she saw the body leave a thick, wet trail of blood on the cool, concrete floor. She almost subconsciously pressed back against the glass but kept on breathing, forcibly calm, aware that the horror had finally arrived. It would have been easy to panic -- her mind kept on cycling through all the possibilities, and concluding that perhaps some _other _experimental specimen had escaped and was now on a rampage. Aerith didn't want to be optimistic to the point of foolishness, and assume that she was exempt from whatever madness had claimed the rest of the lab.

For a while, nothing moved in the dark. The stairwell door was open across the room, and a flickering bulb within the stairwell cast uneven light on the body of the lab technician. She didn't recognize him, and in her attempt to find identifiable features, she realized that it was impossible -- his body no longer had a head. Aerith had to try very hard to keep from turning away and retching, but she did manage to avert her eyes. Nothing else moved in the lab, though, and the screams had fallen silent. Perhaps it was over. Perhaps the mutilated and tangled body some twenty feet away from her was the last victim, and perhaps _she _was now the last person left alive in the building. The thought barely emerged from her subconscious before _something _stepped out of the stairwell, visible for only a few seconds in the flickering light and then melding almost seamlessly into the darkness. Aerith waited, consciously willing herself to breathe evenly as soon as she realized she was on the verge of hyperventilating. Ten, then twenty seconds passed, and then someone stepped into view so abruptly that Aerith actually jumped, nearly falling on her side with her back against the thick glass of her chamber.

Seeing the source of horror from the floors of before in the dim light of a nearby control console didn't assuage her anxieties at all, even if something distant and secondary in her mind kept on muttering that there was something vaguely familiar about him. A man stood before the glass chamber, looking in at her with frighteningly blank eyes, nothing in them except the chilling glare of mako. He was clothed in black and clutching a long sword in one hand, its blade red and dripping from hilt to tip. Her eyes fell to his boots, and past them -- she could see where he'd left red footsteps that led out from the darkness behind him, and when she looked up, she saw his dark clothes didn't entirely hide an emerging red tint, nor were they dry. His hair, too, was long and naturally a pale shade, but even that was speckled with blood. He didn't appear to be dying. That blood wasn't his.

Aerith thought perhaps she was very strange, for not thinking of something like the immediacy of her own death, or the likelihood that she was going to follow the same path as the lab technician. His eyes, she realized, were blank, empty, and almost completely unhinged. All she thought, though, was how much his eyes glowed with Mako -- how they reminded her of Zack's, even if the color was just like the Lifestream.

He lifted his free hand and balled it into a fist. Aerith somehow had the reflexes and foresight to back as far away as she could from the glass panel at the front of her cell just before it shattered completely, falling into a million razor-sharp pieces and shards. _Bullet-proof, shatter-proof glass_, she thought again, and somehow, it didn't have the strength to turn aside his fist. Aerith managed to lift her head a moment later, uncovering it slowly. He took a step inside with one booted foot, and left another bloody footprint behind him. He held his sword tightly, and the complete emptiness on his face seemed like a very likely killing expression, though it didn't look like the kind of mask a man wore when he had to do something unpleasant. She almost thought she saw a kind of madness there, and Aerith let her eyes drop away from it, instead moving to his other hand. Punching through bullet-proof glass had left it littered with little shards that dug into the flesh, though he seemed to have disregarded it completely. Aerith stared at his hand a moment, before looking back up at his face.

"...You shouldn't have punched through the glass... you hurt your hand, you know." It was the stupidest thing to say, she realized, especially considering they were probably also her last words. But something in them seemed to draw him out of what looked very much like a killing trance. Little about his face changed, but in his eyes, there was a sudden awareness, and he stopped advancing towards her entirely. Aerith's eyes went from his hand to his face, and she swallowed.

"Are you a SOLDIER? Do you know Zack?" Her mind was somewhere far, far behind her mouth. For a few moments all she'd been able to fleetingly think about was Zack, the only other SOLDIER she knew. He did ridiculous things, too, sometimes forgot his own strength, and broke more inanimate objects than any other person Aerith had known. It was strange, because he was also among the gentlest people she had ever met.

There was nothing gentle about this man, but her words seemed to have stopped him. Finding her courage from some place inside, Aerith rose a little unsteadily to her feet, and forced a smile on her face just before a sob emerged. She was scared in ways that went beyond self-awareness. "He probably would have done that too, I guess... but... you know, there is a console over there that probably would have worked… just as well…" After a moment, she trailed off and fell silent.

He said nothing. Aerith continued, wondering if perhaps Zack's influence was being seen here in more ways than one -- he freely admitted that his mouth was probably going to dig his own grave someday, too, and Aerith realized she was gently remonstrating a complete stranger with a sword as long as he was, heedlessly, as if they weren't currently standing in a darkened lab amidst some kind of horrific massacre.

"...You... you should at least remove the pieces of glass, I mean... well, if you are like a SOLDIER, I guess it'll just heal, but... that had to hurt," Aerith concluded, weakly, and she fell silent. He looked at her with blank, glaring mako eyes -- before, suddenly, the faintest traces of a scowl appeared on his features. Somehow, the expression wasn't something that would have appeared on his face just seconds before, she knew, because at that point, he had been a monster. Now, though, she wasn't sure what or who he was.

"...You know Zack?" He asked, finally.

"...Y...Yes." He asked the question so sharply, she almost added a 'sir' and a salute after her own response. "Do...Do you?"

He considered the question far too long to possibly be concocting an honest answer, but before he spoke, something seemed to come over him. His eyes seemed to glow even brighter, if possible, and his hand flashed up to his temple, clutching it -- and he stumbled as if struck, then suddenly straightening up before Aerith could even say a word.

"No. Get out of here." She cringed at the sudden harshness in his voice -- it sounded raw, disturbingly so. He seemed to realize it too, because when he next spoke, it seemed as if he was trying very hard not to sound harsh. It wasn't a very convincing effort, and she suddenly doubted that he spoke much, outside of giving orders to other men. In fact, he was now giving an order to her.

"He's outside. Go to him."

And then he was gone so quickly that it took Aerith the better part of five seconds to realize that she was alone again, standing and facing her own freedom as if another person had never been there to begin with. Things were starting to make sense, though, even if her mind started to spin at the fact that she was free and _still alive._ Thoughts of her capture in the slums just days before, the odd glitter in Hojo's eyes, the gleam of dim light off instruments and the stunning sense of disgusting triumph that dripped from the scientist's reedy voice whenever he spoke to her all returned to replace the unknowing horror that had briefly flooded her mind, and she realized that Zack, somehow, must have come to rescue her -- only, he hadn't done it alone. Aerith was suddenly running on shaky legs, muscles tired from being pent up for such an expanse of time, almost blindly making her way through the darkened lab. She didn't know where she was going.

**

* * *

**

When they'd tranquilized her, things had been blurry for a very long time. This lab didn't look much like the one in Midgar, and when she breathed the air, it felt too cold and clear, free of that perpetual haze and polluted stench of the city she knew so well. Aerith stumbled blindly through the dark to the stairwell and found that it only led up, not down, although it wasn't empty. Not at all. Three bodies blocked the way up, all of them lab technicians, and Aerith froze and recoiled, before realizing that there was no other way to go. Swallowing and keeping her eyes trained upwards, towards the top of the stairs, she started up, doing as best as she could to navigate around the corpses and not look to see if they were missing heads, too. She made the mistake of putting her hand to the wall, and when it came away wet she almost froze again. Sheer force of will kept her going, though, and after what seemed like a hellishly long amount of time spent clambering up the stairs and trying to ignore the blood on the walls, on the steps, and now on her hands, Aerith pushed through the door at the top of the stairwell and stumbled out into another room, another section of the lab. At least, that was what common sense told her, but as she stumbled through the room -- past the bodies of guards and more lab technicians -- she thought it didn't look very much like a lab.

The air smelled moldy, tasted of mothballs, and when she slipped in a puddle of blood, she caught herself on an old sofa instead of any kind of lab instrument. This was an old house, she realized, and again, she wondered where they were. This was definitely not Midgar, no house like this existed either on top of the plate or below. They had to be far away, which meant that if Zack was really here, he'd probably traveled across continents and likely against orders to find her. It should have been reassuring, but even in the dark she saw blood stains and bodies thrown wantonly around, and only felt terrified. She just wanted out, away from this house, away from the massacre that had gone on underneath and inside of it.

She didn't know where she was going, but as soon as Aerith emerged into what looked like an entry hall, a familiar voice called her name.

"Aerith!" And then, as if he was having trouble maintaining his composure, "Holy shit, _Aerith_!"

It was Zack. Before she knew it she was in his arms being twirled around, and somehow she broke when her face against his shoulder, allowing tears for the first time in the whole horrific experience. Aerith had never allowed either the Turks or Hojo to see her tears, not when she had been younger, and not now, but this was _Zack_, and somehow, it was okay. Zack kept on hugging her and stammering, and she realized that even for a SOLDIER who almost always laughed in the face of everything, he was probably crying, too.

"Holy crap, I thought I was never gonna -- Aerith, I can't believe -- oh man -- You're okay, right? Hojo didn't do anything to you--"

"--No, I'm fine... I'm fine. There weren't any experiments, or--"

"I'm glad. I'm so glad... Let's get the hell outta here, huh?" There was rawness in Zack's voice, now, but even he seemed to sense it and attempted to crack a joke in a moment, as he led her by the hand towards the door and through the darkness. "...You know, I promised to take you on a date, once I got back from that last mission... this isn't really what I meant, you know..."

Aerith couldn't force a laugh, but she tried her best to smile. "That's fine... I -- I mean, you can always make it up to me, right?"

"Right, right... as soon as we get the hell out of this place..." Even Zack was forcing a smile, though it became less strained as soon as they emerged from the bloodstained mansion and into a cool and unfamiliar night. Aerith recognized nothing about her surroundings, but then again, she had never been outside of Midgar. The world beyond the city and beyond the slums was wholly unknown to her, as foreign as another planet.

"Zack, where are we, anyway?"

"Oh... some small town in the mountains, I don't remember what it's called -- you wouldn't believe, but we're on the East Continent, way up North somewhere... Cloud should be waiting for us somewhere around here, he's the one who helped me find this place – you'll have to meet him, he's a really nice kid--" Zack spoke in a distracted manner, and Aerith soon saw why. Almost instinctively he moved in front of her, drawing his enormous sword and pulling them both behind a tree in one move, as a line of Shinra MPs unleashed fire on them. Zack gritted his teeth, and even though she saw sweat on his forehead, there wasn't any fear on his face. In fact, he continued talking even as his eyes counted each MP and mapped out their route of escape from the Mansion's front yard. "I was so lucky we were able to track you down... In fact, I probably couldn't have done it without Cloud, he's this MP, I'll introduce the two of you later... I didn't even think we'd find you here, and we've been tearing out the inside of the mansion -- but... you managed to get out, I take it." Zack looked at her. "Where were you? Was there a basement here or something that we didn't know about?"

"The other SOLDIER, um... he helped me."

Something seemed to freeze on Zack's face. "...What other SOLDIER? What did he look like?"

"Um... he was tall, silver-haired... but his eyes were definitely Mako."

"...I never saw another SOLDIER."

"He seemed to know you, I think... I wasn't sure," Aerith admitted, and Zack looked as mystified as she was, but there wasn't any time to ponder it.

"Huh, really? I wonder who -- okay, look, Aerith, I gotta split for a second--" Zack talk, for the reality: he was going to kill the MPs. Without further adieu he seemed to vanish, moving like some streaking blur of blues and blacks and the solid steel of his blade and mowing down the MPs like they were nothing, fast enough to keep them from screaming. She had never seen Zack fight before, but he did it so fast and so efficiently, it was almost like she wasn't watching anything at all -- just four Shinra MPs hitting the ground, and then Zack at her side again, not even panting. Sometimes it was easy to forget that Zack _was _a SOLDIER, she realized, but now it had never been clearer. It didn't deter her. She had known it all along.

"C'mon, Aerith... we've gotta go." She took his hand, and he nodded. Together the two of them started out along the pathway, through a gate and downwards. Zack chanced a look back towards the mansion, and even as air rushed through her eyes, Aerith realized the night was now silent. "...It was really well-guarded, back there. You could tell Hojo expected something. And this thing about the other SOLDIER...I don't like it."

"Zack..." Aerith began, than she realized. "You're going against the company to do this, aren't you." She really didn't even need to ask the question, like it wasn't already obvious. It was an odd thing to think about. Zack had never been unquestioningly loyal to Shinra, always aware that the upper echelons – Hojo, the President, and the rest at the executive level – were falling prey to some kind of madness. He'd told her as much, probably dozens of times, always with the same troubled look on his face. Right now, though, he shrugged.

"Hey, it's no big deal," Zack ran in front of her, but she could see his face tighten in rage. "... I wonder the other SOLDIER's here, though I don't remember--" Zack trailed off, seemingly distracted to the point of having trouble keeping a steady train of thought going. It wasn't that far from his usual state, although Aerith liked it a lot better when Zack was exuberant and full of life and humor, not worried and angry like he was now. It was because of her, she realized, and Aerith wanted to apologize, somehow. The thought that something unexplainable and indefinable inside of her was so coveted by Hojo that the man was willing to drag her all the way here, possibly even acting on the orders of the President himself, made her feel almost intensely _lonely _for a few moments -- but that was selfish just to think about, and she dismissed it.

"--Did you see anyone else in the lab? Like, technicians, or--" Zack asked, with some trepidation.

"Yeah... but...the other SOLDIER..."

"...Took 'em all down? Shit..." Zack turned his face away. "…But I guess it doesn't matter."

Again, Aerith had to suppress a shudder, thinking of all the dead MPs and Lab Technicians and wondering if she was worth it -- or rather, if her _blood _was really worth it, because it wasn't her, not really. Hojo just wanted a so-called Ancient, and because her mother was dead, Aerith was the replacement. And those others were now dead because of that.

"Maybe Hojo thought of this on his own, and maybe the President said something, but... I don't know what that old bastard was thinking. He's been unhinged since his son died, they say...then again, they say he's been unhinged all along." Zack was scowling. "...Anyway, we're here now. And I'm not letting him kidnap you again."

A moment later, Zack smiled, and weakly attempted a joke. "Guess you'll have to join SOLDIER now, huh. I'm not letting you leave my side."

"Zack..." Aerith felt her cheeks redden, but his words -- as strong and well-meaning as they were -- couldn't get around the sudden loneliness and trepidation she felt. It was wrong, to feel like this, especially now that Zack was here to rescue her. Her mother -- Ifalfna -- had always said that it took a strong person to smile when others couldn't, and Aerith had always taken it upon herself to be a light in the darkness, supportive and always optimistic when there wasn't a lot of optimism to be found. That was why Sector 6 hadn't been enough to break her, but sometimes the act seemed strained, and she had to pretend. Now was one of those times. "Thank you...and... I'm sorry-"

"Sorry for what? C'mon, we're almost there... Uh, just promise me you'll go on a date when we get back."

"Of course. Let's go on twenty dates."

"Sounds like a deal!"

As they talked, Aerith wondered where they were heading, but she wasn't about to find out. From the alleyways and rooftops of the tiny mountain town the floods emerged, suddenly, SOLDIERs and MPs that seemed to emerge right out of the darkness. In a brief, fleeting moment Aerith wondered where the people of the small town where. Zack started to yell, angrily. Aerith wished she had some kind of weapon, anything to protect from the onslaught -- there wasn't much she could do, but a materia or even a staff could make _some _difference. Magic and bullets were already flying.

A dozen spells at once cast from a dozen materia came at them in one concentrated attack. Zack took the hit directly, but not before pushing her behind him and shielding her from the brunt of it. It didn't even really occur to her what they'd cast until she watched Zack move -- and realized that every motion came with a struggle, and he was fighting against some kind of binding spell, probably Stop. Aerith screamed his name, but the night descended into chaos.

Zack was a SOLDIER first class, but twelve or more Stop spells seemed to have slowed his movements, as if there were chains around him. Nonetheless, she saw two MPs go flying and three more mowed down in quick succession, his sword flashing in blurring arcs and blood flying in great splatters that reflected the moonlight. Things were moving fast now, but time was all relative, because to Aerith it seemed slow. Zack was taking bullets, dozens of them, but he kept on fighting through SOLDIER after SOLDIER, yelling curses all the while. A few times he disappeared, then reappeared in a different place, even on a rooftop once, and other SOLDIERs fell like dominoes. The world was all chaos. Aerith couldn't run, couldn't scream, and even if the materia she always wore in her hair was now in her hand and utterly worthless, she couldn't do anything. Someone crawled forth and grabbed her by the ankle, a SOLDIER, and she kicked him in the face with as much force as she could muster. He seemed barely fazed even if Aerith's heel smashed his nose into his face and made it dribble blood, but a moment later Zack's sword split him open and sent him toppling.

"Aerith...!" She saw his lips move in the shape of her name, but then the night was entirely chaos and fury again, the sound of bullets hitting flesh and splattering blood blocking everything else out. Zack fell forwards, towards her, but managed to bring his sword around and catch himself before his knees hit the ground. Somehow, even riddled in dozens and dozens of bullet holes, Mako and whatever else Hojo put in the SOLDIERs allowed Zack to lift his head long enough to issue a single command. "RUN!"

Maybe it was selfish, and maybe it was foolish. Certainly, she knew that Zack had never anticipated something like this, and all well-laid plans were steadily going to waste, descending into the chaos of the rest of the night -- but she couldn't galvanize herself into action, even knowing that the alternative was seeing Zack die meaninglessly before her eyes and then joining him just a few minutes later. Right now, that didn't seem like so crazy an option, but his eyes pleaded with her.

"Please... I'll follow, got it?" And even if his eyes pleaded, Zack managed to crack a smile. Aerith turned, and she did run, glancing back only to see Zack turn around and face the oncoming SOLDIERs with his sword held at a forty-five degree angle, the very tip hardly off the ground. Somehow, he was grinning. And a few seconds later, the world stopped making sense. Aerith thought she had tripped at first, but when dizziness cleared it occurred to her that some kind of blast had thrown her right off her feet. When she rolled over and looked towards the town, it was orange. Someone had cast a spell, maybe Flare, and the small mountain town was burning. Aerith closed her eyes, and wondered how it had come to _this_.

Three days ago -- at least, that was what her best sense of internal time told her -- she had been alone in the church in the slums, and Turks had come to capture her. Then she'd been tranquilized, and once that wore off she'd awoken in the lab and to Hojo's gloating, and now this -- some kind of insurrection from Hojo, Zack and another nameless SOLDIER here to rescue her, and now a night that was ending in blood, fire, and disaster. The planet starting whispering in her ear, something about wrongness, about confusion, about things not having intended to go this way, and Aerith ignored it, couldn't even begin to think it about among all the other hell. Blood that belonged only to her trickled down her forehead. She reached up, and found where she had struck her head after being thrown off her feet by the explosion, and everything seemed to blur afterwards, maybe in dizziness and maybe in tears when she saw Zack's face, though she never felt him return to the planet...

...what could have been minutes, or even eons later, Aerith opened her eyes and looked up into the starry sky above. At first she thought the ground was moving underneath her. Then she realized that she was no longer lying in the dirt, but instead in the back of a truck as it rolled and rattled over a rocky ground. Aerith blinked and slowly sat up, then turned. Nearby, a SOLDIER sat looking at her, his gaze and his face as chillingly empty as it had been before, his eyes nothing but a vivid mako glare that reminded her of something Zack had once said -- in creating the SOLDIERs, Hojo had probably stuffed half the Lifestream inside of them. And Zack...

"...Where's Zack?" She asked.

For a long while, he looked at her, his eyes saying nothing. She looked all around, and then saw -- nothing around them except nighttime darkness. Finally, he spoke.

"...The town was completely razed to the ground."

Unspoken in his words was a solemn confession: _I did it._ Aerith stared at him, and then looked around again, like this was a joke -- or like Zack would suddenly appear, laughing like usual, maybe a little winded, but definitely okay. Nothing. Next to her, the other SOLDIER just looked at her with a face that was too entirely blank given the situation.

"...But Zack..."

He looked at her for a while longer, before turning away. "...I burned everything... except for Hojo. I couldn't find him."

"Where's _Zack?" _She asked, a third time -- and completely pointlessly, too. She knew the answer -- this was another question that answered itself. And she didn't think it mattered to this man, either, who now sat staring out towards the darkness with those impossibly bright mako eyes of his. Though they were same shade as the Lifestream, they were nothing like it -- too deadened and artificial, devoid of any of the Lifestream's warmth even if its power was definitely there. He was still covered in bloodstains, though there was ash on his face and in his hair now, too. The fires were his work.

"...It wasn't supposed to turn out this way," he finally said, a simple statement that slipped from his lips with a complete lack of expression and yet still managed to hit her like a peal of thunder. He was right. The planet was telling her the same thing, and shouting warnings at the same time, screaming nonsensical threats that she tried to push from her mind. Right now, the hearing the planet's voice seemed more like a curse instead of a blessing, and not for the first time, either. When she spoke, her voice came out completely hollow.

"I know."

That was all that passed between them. She didn't get the time to ask his name, because he'd already vanished like a shadow -- there one moment, gone the next. Aerith watched the land by and remained silent, though the tears came freely and steadily as the truck continued to slip through the night.

**

* * *

**

The world faded, but he choked and fell to his knees, clutching both sides of his head and writhing as the planet raged. Somehow, though, he managed to force his head up against the pain.

The Cetra stood before him, now wearing Zack's face -- ineptly, though, because Zack had never worn that oddly empty and furious expression.

"You did a poor job."

"I saved the girl, didn't I?"

"You didn't kill the rest."

"Hojo wasn't around--"

"The scientist doesn't matter. It's me. You didn't kill me." The Cetra hissed, sounding nothing like Zack at all, and probably not trying very hard to pretend, either.

Sephiroth paused to simply stare at him, then shook his head. "I assumed he would die in the fire."

"You assumed incorrectly, and the link to that time is closed. Correcting it will be costly."

"...As long as it's costly for both of us."

This time the Cetra and the Planet reared up in utter, irrational wrath and began pummeling him, repeatedly, breaking his body to pieces with a complete lack of finesse -- and the quick brutality, he realized, wasn't quite as bad as the slower, more insidious things they did to him. He ground his teeth so hard they hurt and shut his eyes until he saw stars, dug his fingers into the side of his head until the nails split the skin and blood dribbled down -- but withstood it and regretted nothing. His lack of remorse only sent them into a deeper rage, wild and frenzied, ready to do whatever it could to break him. They succeeded, but in the end, when he dared to breathe again and choked around mako bubbling up unbidden from the back of his throat, _they _almost seemed more exhausted than he was. He opened his eyes and looked over at the Cetra, who was now nothing more than a shadow, the dim silhouette of someone he didn't know.

"Why did Nibelheim have to burn again? I thought you wanted me to undo what went wrong. What was the point of having me kill myself, if you're just going to go and have me do everything over again--"

The punishment was the equivalent of a slap, now, but it was enough to silence him. For the first time the Cetra came right over to him and kicked him in the face, with force that was little more than what a human might have managed. Compared to the agony they could inflict on him without so much as touching his body, it was almost laughable. He didn't dare laugh, though.

"—Tiny ripples in the surface of the water spread and expand. They never become waves, though. Your death affected a great many things, but not so much as you'd expect. As I said before, it is only the beginning. And for us to achieve our objective... Nibelheim must still burn."

"...Is it because you need Strife for something...? Or is there some other reason? ...Just what is your objective, anyway? What kind of future do you want to create?"

Now the Cetra smiled -- sickly sweet in an instant, far removed from the cold, empty fury of before. Sephiroth realized that cold emptiness wasn't entirely unlike looking into a mirror, but this condescension-dripping smile reminded him only of Hojo. Responding to his thoughts, the Cetra's face melded and changed, its body hunched over, and again it was the Professor, leering down at him and wringing his bony white-gloved hands.

"It's something you could understand, Jenova's child. We have decided that for the good of this planet, the traitors must be destroyed. They will simply never learn or change. Once their poisonous influence is annihilated, both the Planet and the Lifestream will be ours again."

His surroundings, Sephiroth realized, were almost appallingly silent. For a long time he looked at his captor, hearing nothing and yet almost sensing a kind of steady rumble from the insides, possibly a distant whisper from the Planet. He felt a mingling of disgust, disbelief, and exhaustion and yet didn't know which emotion would be the best way to react -- and not really caring, because the Cetra surely sensed all three and more, probably right down to the more distant loathing building inside of him.

"...I see, now. Jenova and I didn't need to be destroyed just because we were a threat to the Planet, not really." Sephiroth used his most condescendingly arrogant smile, though he imagined it must have looked wan and forced. "You were just angry that we thought of taking it over first. So you'll just go back and time and create a world where you can just take it back for yourself, is that it? Even if it means using me? You're nothing more than jealous, irrational, _powerless_ children."

The Cetra never bothered removing the smile from his face, and for some reason, Sephiroth saw it the entire time, as the rage of the Ancients and the wrath of the Planet conjoined solely to break him completely to pieces. Even as he screamed, though, a kind of grim satisfaction rose up out of the twisting, broiling agony. He knew the Cetra weren't going to break anything without piecing it back together. From where they were -- melded eternally into the Lifestream, where they could do little more but sift through the flow of time -- they had power over nothing except _him._

**a/n**

1. That was a long chapter…and hopefully not disastrously OOC, even though this story probably is wangsty.

2. Thanks to everyone who's left a review so far. Please continue to review, let me know what you think.

3. Updates for this story will be on weekends, most likely Fridays or Saturday. So… come back next week!

(insert shameless begging for reviews here).


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter Three**

The beginnings of a slow ache in his limbs, followed by a knife of pain through his side drew him into a kind of wakefulness, though he could never really be sure of whether or not he actually slept here, in the utter darkness of his captivity. Now the Cetra stood a few feet away, looking at him with one hand on his hip and cocking his head slightly. It surprised Sephiroth only for a moment to see that it had taken on Zack's form, though as time went on, it seemed like the impression just kept on getting worse. After just a few seconds, the Cetra was nothing but a shadow again -- and Sephiroth wondered if his own memories were really so foggy and uncertain, that a clear picture of Zack couldn't even be reproduced out of his own mind.

It didn't surprise him to know that the Cetra clearly perceived what he was thinking at any given moment. "How well do you remember anyone, truly? Hojo is clear to you. Yet a man who considered you to be a friend is little more than a shadow. Of course, it could always be that you simply don't want to remember him -- your clearest memories are of his face as it twisted in hatred, aren't they?"

"What do you want me to do now?" Sephiroth asked, flatly. If it was possible for a mere shadow to show displeasure, he was seeing it now -- a kind of rippling in the half-light and half-dark, followed by another rumble from deep within the Planet. The Cetra certainly sensed his impatience, as it circled and studied him with another familiar face, a kind one – but that was another mistake. Professor Gast had simply left him for no real reason and died, and after his death, Hojo considered most of the restrictions on experimentation to be unnecessary frivolities, hindrances to true scientific progress. Wearing Gast's face, the Cetra said nothing. Half-expecting another punishment, a non-physical slap in the face or a blossoming pain in his insides, Sephiroth waited and tensed -- but to his surprise, the Cetra suddenly turned away.

"We cannot possibly see all potential outcomes, even from within the flow of time." It came out as a mutter, almost a kind of confession. Sephiroth thought he sensed discordance in its voice, and felt another small twinge of satisfaction. This time, neither the Cetra nor the vengeful Planet seemed to notice his feelings, meaning that perhaps disunity within their mass meant that he could press them more without feeling immediate repercussions.

"If Zack is really such a problem, why not prevent him from coming to Midgar and joining SOLDIER in the first place?"

"In a universe where you ceased to exist at the age of seven, the SOLDIER program seems to have been just as successful. Zack joined on a whim, out of the same desire to become a hero – and did so, in the Wutain War. Strong, admirable, interested in his subordinates, a powerful fighter and an excellent leader. Not as magnificent as you, maybe… but perhaps he was loved, while you never were." The Cetra said. "And yet... still problematic."

"Did Cloud Strife still join SOLDIER?" Sephiroth asked, then frowned. Perhaps he was misremembering more than he thought. "No... he never was a SOLDIER, was he?"

The Cetra didn't respond, for whatever reason. It seemed to be deep in thought, and Sephiroth wondered just how extraordinarily complicated it was to think clearly, when you were nothing but part of a massive shared intelligence given the shape of a singular entity. Knowing discord existed among the Cetra, though, seemed like it could be useful.

A few minutes later, a response of sorts came -- a lazy slap, bowling Sephiroth over and making him raise a hand to his temple in a flash, but nothing really bone-shaking or mind-ripping. Arbitrary as always, though, and Sephiroth had the feeling that even the deepest disunity among the Cetra's hive mind couldn't shake the fact that most of them enjoyed punishing him. Another lazy slap, slamming him back into the ground – he supposed they didn't like being called a hive mind.

"The details are of no concern to you," The Cetra intoned, its legion of voices echoing hollowly around them.

"Some of you disagree. I can sense it. You're just like children, meddling with something you shouldn't--"

Swift, brutal retribution slammed him into another invisible hard surface, persisting until he clutched both sides of his head in an attempt to keep it from ripping apart from inside out, hunched over and trembling while the aftershocks faded away. He could taunt them all he wanted, but they also knew there were no real limits to the amount of agony he could endure at their behest. It was, oddly, a lesson he'd first learned a long time ago and in another place and time, something that Hojo had taught him. The only limits then were Hojo's imagination, but something told him the Cetra had absorbed enough generations of knowledge from the Lifestream to never be constrained by such a small thing as lack of imaginative impulse. When the pain faded entirely he slumped over, but decided to hold his tongue.

"The lives of many improved without your influence," The Cetra remarked, its tone more solid, a little brighter now.

"...Sounds like Wutai still burned... so did Nibelheim..."

"You're discounting innumerable other sins you committed."

"...This is coming from someone who wants to destroy every human on the Planet? Seems the only thing I did that really mattered was trying to take what you think is yours--" Something tight as iron cinched around his throat and began constricting, and he choked and grabbed at it compulsively, even realizing it was only the Cetra's more creative way of not just telling him but _forcing _him to _shut up_. His field of vision began caving inwards rapidly, but the tightness vanished right before he lost consciousness. While he lay gasping, the Cetra walked towards him again.

"You're even more hopelessly foolish than I would have anticipated, Jenova's child," the Cetra said, and the discord in its voice he'd sensed before was gone. It wore the face of Zack again. "Another point in time approaches. Whatever you do with Zack, make sure that it will ultimately result in the protection of our heir. That is of utmost importance to us."

"...Does she have a say in any of this? I thought she was an Ancient, too."

"Ripping your vocal chords out will not negatively affect our end goals." The Cetra's response sounded almost cheerful. "We will guide you, as before. Time is limited, and so, unfortunately, is strength. Should you make a mistake, we may not be able to make further, minute alterations in order to correct it."

"...You're being purposely vague so you can blame it on me when things go wrong. Just what does this meddling around hope to achieve, anyway? If you really want to destroy humans--" He clapped a hand to his mouth and keeled over, and this time, they really did make him cry out, while the endless sensation of ripping and tearing and bludgeoning and biting in his insides combined with a far deeper pain than any he'd experienced before -- fire racing through his veins, burning them out from the inside. The mako inside of him, so potent his blood practically glowed with it when he bled, was nothing more than another extension of the Lifestream, and it seemed to respond to their beck and call, too. The fire took longer to fade away than the rest.

Yet when he finally forced his eyes open and saw stars and bright bursts of light, it took a while for him to realize he was on his back, somewhere, looking up at another clear night sky. Distant and rumbling, the Cetra spoke to him, while he laid and struggled against a nearly crushing weight in an effort to get back on his feet.

_"To destroy the traitors, we needn't lift a hand, except perhaps yours. In the end, we will see to it that they destroy themselves, and take all of their poisons and monsters away with them. For that… it seems as if the fulfillment of certain conditions is necessary. There are some humans that we need alive, and others that must die."_

"…But you really don't know who." No response. It seemed like the Cetra second-guessed themselves, but didn't like it when he second-guessed them. Sephiroth frowned blearily, before managing to roll to his knees, coughing and choking. Out of his mouth, a fine, phosphorous green mist congealed into filmy liquid on his hand, and he studied it in silence before wiping it away. Finally, he lurched to his feet and took stock of the night around him.

**

* * *

**

The skies weren't so clear, here, and a familiar heavy humidity clung to the ground. Vapors from the lowlands rose and further soured the deadened air, mingling with the stench of the metropolis that sat not quite eighty miles to the North of where he was, now clothed in black once more and with the Masamune before him. A dim illusion of freedom surrounded him, created only by the rather unusual silence of the Cetra. He could still sense them, certainly, faint murmurings in the back of his mind that ebbed and flowed just like the Lifestream, but much weaker than before.

He sat, flexing his sword hand and looking around the dark, waiting for some indication of just what he was supposed to be waiting for, here. He'd tried taking off towards Midgar, thinking perhaps the Cetra just had irritatingly imprecise aim and really wanted him there, but as soon as green tendrils shot up out of the ground and wrapped around his legs, pulling him downwards and burning, he'd changed his mind about Midgar and instead spent the next ten minutes or so testing them, until he worked out a hundred yard radius -- somewhere above the immense dead waste lands beyond the plains surrounding Midgar, a place where Shinra felt no qualms about dumping out hundreds of millions of tons of Mako sludge and other toxic waste. Apparently, that hadn't changed with his death. The Cetra wanted him here for now, probably to wait for something.

Sephiroth remained sitting amidst a rocky outcrop, hidden from view in case anyone but the Planet and its so-called guardians was around, carefully watching for any signs of life. Murky memories of having once came here for a SOLDIER training routine surfaced after a while – it had been just before the Wutai War, actually. Given the advanced state of deadened decay around him, this was much later than that time.

But right now, it was impossible to determine _when _he was. Maybe relative time didn't matter so much. His memories didn't mean much in this world, now that he no longer existed in it except as some kind of anomaly from a timeline that his death had erased, he supposed. It didn't make much sense, though it did irritate him, somehow, to think that the Cetra acted so arbitrarily. As far as he could tell, their only reason for having him kill himself was to test him; their outrage at his actions was merely a front for what seemed like jealousy. And here he was -- enduring punishment for the same crimes they wanted to commit, and yet still somehow necessary, in the fulfillment of ambitions that weren't quite dissimilar to what his own had once been. He didn't quite understand that, either – seeing Nibelheim again and knowing what he'd found there in another place and time still haunted him, but the rage he remembered upon finding out the truths there was now nothing more than a dull, weary resentment. After a time, Sephiroth scowled, stretched out his legs and leaned back against the rocky surface behind him, silently cursing the Cetra, feeling them swell up angrily, and then gritting his teeth while they spent the next five minutes or so pinpricking away at his consciousness.

A sudden grunt brought him back to full alertness, but he didn't move, not yet. A low sliding noise, like someone dragging and positioning a body, another grunt, some kind of guttural gurgle, and a sigh somewhere nearby preceded a low mutter.

"Wish I could light a fire, but somethin' tells me we'd both wake up in something's stomach, huh."

He recognized the voice without even really having to think about it. Silently, Sephiroth circled around the rocky outcrop, really the only landmark of any height in the entire area, listening to the one-sided conversation all the while.

"...We're about, hmmm... twenty miles from the nearest little town, I'd say. Not that it'd be safe to just walk into town, but it does mean we're almost home-free..."

Some other noise responded to the voice, a low, guttural moaning sound.

"...Hey... that's a pretty good idea. Why don't we tame some chocobos and ride the rest of the way? 'Course, there aren't any chocobos in these parts. Back when I was just a cadet, we came through here on some kind of stupid training mission. Survival stuff, with all the city kids... god, that was a pain in the ass, let me tell you. Almost lost about five guys who were too friggin' stupid to watch their step, then some huge spider attacked us -- hey, hey, you look tired, Cloud," Sephiroth peeked over the top of the outcrop just as Zack leaned forward, catching another man as he slumped over. With a sinking feeling, Sephiroth recognized the second man, too -- ridiculous hair sticking in every direction and wearing a SOLDIER uniform, but now lying on his side motionlessly, not even making a sound. Even from a distance, Sephiroth saw how intensely his eyes burned with mako.

Zack made an attempt at straightening out Cloud's limbs, but Cloud curled into a semi-fetal position anyway, his only movements the occasional twitch. Zack sighed again, but Sephiroth watched him force half-a-smirk on his face a moment later.

"Why don't you get some rest?"

Cloud Strife didn't respond.

"Well, you can at least try, anyway. I'll take the first watch. And, um. Probably the second one, too." Zack looked at Cloud for a moment, before shuffling around and facing outwards, keeping his eyes on the dead, empty land around them. "...Like I was saying, it was one hell of a stupid training mission. The city kids kept on disappearing and I had to go get them, and when we had to find something to eat, some guy ate a poisonous lizard. I mean, all you had to do was look at it and think _'hey, that thing's got fucking red and purple stripes, maybe I shouldn't just pop it in my mouth,'_ but you know, that's how the city kids in my unit were. Ha, and here the higher ups said I was stupid for forcin' 'em to equip an assload of healing materia before we left. But, you know, typical Shinra dumbassery. Look up total fucking incompetence in the dictionary, and you'll have a picture of Shinra right there." Zack laughed, but it was forced. Above, Sephiroth remained silent, somehow barely even breathing.

He did remember it clearly now -- a training mission he'd been forced to lead, some time right before the outbreak of the Wutain War. Five SOLDIER cadets, all third classes, had gotten lost and collapsed due to heat exhaustion, while a second class had eaten a poisonous lizard. They'd been forced to drag him along for the rest of the mission -- it might have killed a regular human with just a touch of its skin, but luckily, a combination of his enhanced SOLDIER cells and Heal materia had saved him. The details of the training mission hid behind a fog in his mind, but he knew one thing: Zack hadn't been along.

But at least it gave Sephiroth an idea of _when_ he was, though as soon as he'd seen Zack and Strife, he'd guessed that this was after Nibelheim, and after the time when Strife -- an unremarkable, regular cadet -- had been transformed into something entirely different by Hojo, greater than even SOLDIER. Not that he seemed like it now -- Cloud looked like a victim in the advanced stages of mako poisoning. Still, it confirmed that what he'd already suspected -- that after the events of Nibelheim, Zack and Cloud had both fallen into Hojo's hands. It also confirmed that even without his presence in the world, events had mostly occurred in the exact same manner as before, or at least the Cetra seemed to want it that way --

"I know you're out there." Zack spoke, suddenly, about ten feet below and facing the other direction. Sephiroth froze and put a hand to his sword, and the Cetra hissed in his mind, impatient.

_"Well? Isn't now the time?"_

His hand closed around the hilt of his sword and he prepared, knowing he could probably strike from above and kill both of them before Zack could even put a finger on the Buster Sword below -- and yet, for some reason, his grip on the hilt of his sword loosened, then his hand fell to his side. The Cetra remained silent, as he slid down the other side of the outcrop, and walked right out into the open. Zack didn't bother to turn and face him, but he knew the other man was bluffing.

"It isn't nice to spy on people," Zack said. "Even if you try to do it really quietly. But, you know, I'll give you credit. You were quieter than a Turk." Slowly, he got to his feet -- deceptively slowly -- and turned around. As soon as he saw Sephiroth, though, his sword was in his hands, his movements swift and sure despite the fact that Zack, plainly, seemed to be working against his share of mako withdrawal symptoms.

"Look, I don't know who the fuck you're kidding." Zack's voice came out flat and terribly weary. "I can see your eyes from here. SOLDIER, huh? Took them long enough, to send you. Cloud," he looked towards Strife, who didn't even twitch, and just barely seemed to be breathing. "Run away. This is probably going to get ugly." Cloud didn't move. "Or not. Just stay behind me. So, let's get this over with, you."

Sephiroth didn't move, and the Cetra didn't make a move, either -- it seemed to him like they were content to simply watch and wait, for now. He remained, studying Zack in silence. The other didn't seem to recognize him -- but then, he wouldn't.

"Well?" Zack asked. "I know I should just attack you and get it over with, but humor me. At least give me an arrest order, or something. I'm not gonna listen, but you can try."

"I'm not with Shinra."

"Uh huh," Zack said, and even from a distance and in the darkness, Sephiroth saw the sweat glistening on his brow. He wasn't in good shape, hardly fit enough to be protecting Cloud from whatever Shinra could throw at him. This, he realized, was when Zack had really died -- not in the Nibelheim reactor, but somewhere on the road, and probably achingly close to Midgar, his final destination. Not that Midgar would have been safer -- amidst some thirty-million people who crowded the slums and the five or so million people living on top, though, sometimes it was easier to lose yourself in the crowd, particularly when so many people in the city itself didn't particularly give a damn about Shinra, and wouldn't give a damn whether they got their hands back on an escaped fugitive.

Zack narrowed his eyes. "You had to have been with Shinra at some point, though. So you might just want to be on your way. Huh, buddy? How about it?"

This was getting nowhere, clearly. Sephiroth almost reached towards his sword again -- and Zack tensed, seeing him shift his weight -- but something made him pause again, a hidden impulse, a shadow growing in his mind. This time, when Zack clearly saw Sephiroth prepare to attack then balk at the last minute, a puzzled look spread across his features, and he shifted his weight too, even lowering the Buster Sword. It was very apparent that he barely had the strength to hold it up for so long, but it wasn't stopping him from charging headlong into a fight. It wasn't foolhardiness, not like the Zack he remembered -- there wasn't any choice this time.

The Cetra were strangely silent, even if Sephiroth was sure this definitely wasn't what they'd planned. "...Did you escape from Hojo's lab?"

"...I did," Zack said, matter-of-factly. "And if you're not with Shinra, you wouldn't know that."

"...You came all the way from Nibelheim, right?"

"Yup. You Shinra assholes sure took a long time to catch up with me. SOLDIER just ain't what it used to be."

"You went to Nibelheim originally to rescue a girl named Aerith. But it wasn't a mission from the Company."

"Wow, you're well-informed," Zack snapped, but he sounded a little unnerved. "Makes it even worse. Cloud, you should really, _really _run right now."

"...Why did Hojo capture her in the first place?"

Zack paused, then frowned, looking at Sephiroth cock-eyed and arching an eyebrow. "I dunno. He's a mad-man. But you should know that, if you're a SOLDIER. Which, uh, it's pretty obvious that you are." They looked at one another for a moment, and Zack let out an exasperated sigh. "Fine. Hojo wanted her because she's an Ancient, or... something. I don't know. I... I don't really care, either. I just hope she got out. You know the Ancients? Cetra or whatever?"

"...Yes."

"Hojo really wants one, for who-the-hell knows what," Zack scoffed. "But he's nuckin' futs -- fuckin' nuts, sorry. Apparently, he used to be slightly less crazy, but his son died about ten years before I joined the company. Don't get me wrong, I don't think he was actually attached to the kid or anything. I guess they'd invested about ten million gil in trying to make this special SOLDIER guy right from the womb, but he just up and died when he was just a kid. I dunno. Anyway, I guess the President gave the order for Hojo to take her out of the city, since he's in on it, too… then the Vice President Rufus gave the order to have her brought back, but… either way, I ended up going against orders and making a huge mess…" Zack shrugged a little, then rose his sword again. His muscles strained with the effort, visibly. "...Now, come on. You obviously can tell that I can't stand here all night like this."

"I'm not here for either of you," Sephiroth finally said, and now the Cetra started rumbling again, but there was a mingling of anger, impatience, and _interest _there, proof that if he didn't know his mind, they really didn't either -- because he had no idea what he was doing. "...Aerith made it out of Nibelheim safely, and went back to Midgar. I... was there."

"...You were there?" Zack, surprisingly, stepped closer and peered at Sephiroth in the darkness, his eyes widening. "Wait, was it...? Yeah, Aerith said... what was it again?" He cocked his head, shifted his weight, then frowned. "A SOLDIER with silvery-white hair, I think. Was that you? No, way, it couldn't be, but... were you the one she met down in the lab? I thought she'd imagined it or something, but... someone else was there. At least, the fighting kept on even after they took me down..."

"Yes. That was me. I encountered Aerith in Hojo's lab..."

"Seriously?" Zack had let his sword point drop almost entirely, and for some inexplicable reason, Sephiroth had to resist chiding the other man for letting his guard down before it was certain there wasn't a threat. "No way. So you--"

"--I wasn't there for long. I was after Hojo."

"Huh, good luck with that. You out for his blood? So, wait, if you helped Aerith get out -- huh, it doesn't make sense," Zack said, his mind now seeming to be working too fast for him to even form complete thoughts. "Unless... did Rufus send you or something?"

Sephiroth paused a moment, unsure how to answer that, exactly. He decided it was best to just be vague, though. "I don't work for either the President or Vice President."

"...Okay, I guess if you're not gonna tell me, you're REALLY not gonna tell me," Zack grumbled. "No one ever tells me anything, but expects me to take care of shit all the time. Just... are you here to kill us, or... talk to us, or..."

"...I'm here to accompany you to Midgar."

Zack's eyes widened for a moment, before he scowled. "Why? Look, buddy. Either be honest with me, or hit the road. You don't exactly look like you're the sort who does random acts of kindness for strangers. Unless you mean--"

"I mean just what I said. I'll accompany you as far as Midgar, and part ways with you at the gates of the slums," Sephiroth replied, but Zack looked at him doubtfully.

"Why? You'd better not be after Cloud. So much as touch him, and I'll kill you."

"That's fine."

The naturally trusting Zack he remembered wasn't far from the surface, Sephiroth realized, as the other man lowered his sword completely and studied him for a moment longer, before shrugging. "Do whatever you want, I guess. But it isn't like we need an escort. If you think you're doing us a huge favor--"

"--This area isn't very safe, is it?"

"Please. For a SOLDIER first class?"

"I never said I was first class."

"I'm not blind."

"Neither am I. The mako withdrawal symptoms have left you barely able to raise a sword, and he's not even conscious. And it doesn't look like he's going to be any time soon."

Zack arched an eyebrow -- before finally shrugging, sitting down roughly next to Cloud, and laughing sardonically. "...I guess you could probably kill me easily, no matter what I pretend. Ha. They said I was the best SOLDIER, or at least as good as anybody, and here some nobody I met in the swamp has to escort me to Midgar. Make sure I don't get eaten by a monster or something, huh? Of course, you probably know Shinra's after me, too. Turks, regular troopers, probably SOLDIER... if there are any SOLDIERs left. You must be a deserter or something. Did the rest of 'em end up deserting, too? Or did they all die in a coup or something?"

"I don't know." Sephiroth didn't sit down, but leaned against the rock surface behind them instead and peered off into the night, listening more to the Cetra than he was to Zack. They were angry, perhaps even confused.

_"This isn't part of the plan, is it?"_

(You want the traitors to destroy themselves, don't you?)

Silence. None of the million in the hive mind bothered to answer his query, though he could tell they were seething mad about something -- and again, he realized that while they might have had control over the very mako inside of his body, they couldn't see entirely into his mind. It was reassuring, if only just a little. He already knew they were more than capable of crushing him here, if they so desired, and even if something held them back from doing so, he had little doubt in their absolute ability to force his hand.

(Just wait. Don't you think Zack could be useful?)

_"You're sure you're not just acting out of sentimentality?" _

Inwardly, he almost laughed -- and Zack frowned, probably seeing something suspicious on his face. "Hey, how about I take first watch. And second watch. You should, you know, get some rest. Since you're going to be doing most of the fighting and stuff tomorrow." It was transparently obvious that if Sephiroth went to sleep, Zack would just take Cloud and try to run.

"I'm not tired."

"Well, I guess that's understandable. You look like you've got just about the entire Lifestream in you, with your eyes and all. Do you even need to sleep? Or maybe you're nocturnal, like a bat or something?"

The Cetra still had their doubts. _"We cannot foresee all possible outcomes, but--"_

(Then just let me do this. You've weakened to the point of having to rely on forcing humans to destroy themselves. And you're relying on me, of all people, to hasten along the process. So maybe you should just go along with this, don't you think?)

_"If you're telling us to trust you, you're speaking at the height of arrogant stupidity."_

(...I do know that you fear me. Otherwise, you wouldn't be using what little strength you have in order to make sure I don't act out of line.)

_"Jenova is dead. The main source of your power is--"_

(It wasn't just that.)

The Cetra's rumblings grew more intense, angered by his words, angered by his attitude. _"We possess the power to utterly annihilate you, just as we did before."_

(...In the end, wasn't it Aerith and Cloud Strife who enabled it to happen?)

_"Failure is simply not an option, Jenova's child. If we do not fulfill our objective, the Planet will die."_

(...So?)

The utter, abysmal silence, both within and without, gave Sephiroth enough time to mentally prepare, knowing all the while he'd crossed the line -- positively hurdled over it -- and yet not really caring. The rules, he knew, were different. He couldn't bluff with a collective consciousness that could see most of his mind, and he already knew he didn't have the power to resist them -- in the other stream of time, the events that had now been erased, something had given the Cetra a more over _him_ that managed to transcend time, somehow.

Still, there was nothing to stop him from deriving what little satisfaction he could out of knowing that he could send them into an irrational rage with little more than forced nonchalance. In a way... the whole situation was deeply and humorously ironic, and if he were the sort, he might have just laughed until his mind broke from the reality of it.

He couldn't laugh in the face of their rage, not for long. He didn't bother trying. Almost carelessly, they buffeted him with the full force of anger, kicked him over as an afterthought, and left him clutching his head as the aftershocks faded away, unable to keep from trembling. When the blurriness faded away from his vision, though, he saw Zack had rolled right into a fighting stance and now stood with his sword over his shoulder, wide-eyed, preparing to strike.

"What the hell was that?"

"It's nothing..." He muttered, straightening up and cringing at another blow, even if it was mild compared to the last one.

"Sure it's not Mako poisoning or something? I'm not going to have to carry Cloud AND you back to Midgar?"

"...I'm certain. It's nothing." Sephiroth covered his mouth and gagged, choking again. When he drew his hand away, another fine film of iridescent green remained on his glove, barely visible in the dim moonlight.

"...Okay. Fine." Zack sat back down, folded his arms, and glared, looking contrite. After a moment, though, his expression softened a little. "You probably already know our names, since you're actually Shinra and all. But I'm Zack, SOLDIER First Cla-- well, forget that," he muttered, actually reddening. "...The kid is Cloud. What's your name?"

He looked over at Zack, watching his face in the moonlight, carefully reading his reaction. "It's Sephiroth."

At first, there was something -- Zack arched an eyebrow, then narrowed his eyes, as if trying to remember something. "Sephiroth. Is that... huh, where have I heard that name before?"

Sephiroth said nothing.

"...Well, definitely not in SOLDIER. But that's not exactly a common name, is it? Huh. Well, whatever." Zack pulled his knees up and slung his arms around them, refocusing his gaze on Cloud. He hadn't moved the entire time, and made no noises except the occasional incoherent gurgle. His eyes were still open, though, staring sightlessly ahead, wide, nothing more than a glaring blue with pupils drawn to a mere pinprick. "Try to get some sleep or something, Cloud... Don't worry. I've got things taken care of."

Cloud made a soft gurgling noise -- plainly involuntary. Sephiroth glanced towards Zack and thought he saw a flash of wetness on his cheeks, but the other man turned away and faced the surrounding wasteland again, almost forcefully. "...We'll make it to Midgar. I think you'll really like Aerith, Cloud..."

Sephiroth felt the Planet rumble angrily, somewhere deep within, and he leaned back, looking towards the endless expanse of stars above in an effort to keep himself from cringing -- satisfied in knowing that even if they were going to dog his steps, the Cetra must have been willing to trust whatever course of action he wanted to take. Somehow, amidst all the absurdity, it occurred to him that they probably didn't even know the meaning of the word _irony_.

**TBC**

**author's notes**

1. Again, thanks to everyone who left reviews, I appreciate all of them. Stay tuned next weekend for: Zack POV! More angst! Bonding! And fight scenes!


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter Four**

Zack cracked an eye open, then shut it again, not wanting to be seen. Sephiroth sat about six feet away, still as a statue, looking off towards the swamps in the early morning sunlight, in the same place and position he'd been in for the entire night. Quite frankly, it was freaking weird.

But he wasn't the only thing weird about the morning. Zack sat up and sniffed, then grimaced at the bitterly metallic smell of mako in the air. Sephiroth looked towards him with those odd glaring mako eyes, and Zack grinned. "Don't you just love the smell of rotting Mako in the morning?"

Sephiroth just stared at him quizzically, like it was actually a hard question -- before getting to his feet. "We should move."

"Hold on. I gotta wake Cloud up." Zack rotated around, and gave Cloud a little shake. "Hey, Spikes. Time to go." Cloud didn't move an inch, just like he expected -- but the kid's chest still rose and fell, surprisingly steady even despite the horrible shape he was in. Zack sighed, and then mused that Cloud really wasn't a kid anymore -- at least twenty-one, he guessed, if Cloud hadn't been lying about his age back when he'd first tried out for SOLDIER. It was impossible to know, and because it was hard to think of, Zack decided not to let it worry him. The funny thing, though, was that everything was a little hard to think about right now. He got to his feet, then lifted Cloud over his shoulder, same as always -- though his body definitely wasn't the same. Zack staggered a few steps before straightening up, mentally bracing for another arduous day.

"I hope you're not fresh out of a lab or something," he muttered in the other man's direction, "'cuz if you collapse, I don't think I've got the energy to carry this guy and you." He watched Sephiroth carefully, waiting for some kind of reaction. But his traveling partner -- or armed escort, or captor, or whatever the hell was going on here -- just looked at him with totally blank glaring eyes. If his body even felt like cooperating, Zack might have found the other man a little amusing, actually. Definitely the hard core SOLDIER type, the kind who took himself way too freaking seriously.

He didn't say much, either. He was the sort who might have been incredibly boring on a mission, all cold and quiet and all about the duty even when there was sight-seeing to be done. Then again, looking back, Zack wondered if perhaps he hadn't taken things seriously enough -- somehow, everything that had happened in Nibelheim, and everything that had happened to Cloud in Hojo's lab -- that had completely blind-sided him. On his shoulder, Cloud let out another soft muttering noise, and Zack only hoped that he didn't start thrashing again. Sometimes it seemed like some sort of seizure, but it was hard to tell. It seemed like a miracle that Cloud was still alive -- still breathing, even if Cloud's eyes looked like the other half of the Lifestream that wasn't in Sephiroth had been stuffed into him. Zack blinked and grimaced again, reminded of the stench of rotting mako around them.

"...This place is even worse than I remember. They've totally polluted the entire coastline."

Sephiroth, walking about fifteen feet ahead of them at all times, didn't respond. He seemed in a hurry, and it was understandable -- Zack would have hurried a little harder, too, but his limbs felt like lead. Maybe his nerves were frayed, too. He didn't like the silence around them, so he filled the air with the sound of his voice, while looking around with Cloud on his back, occasionally wiping sweat out of his eyes, and taking stock of their surroundings.

"...God, this place smells like shit. It smelled better last time, Cloud. Shinra's been dumping more sludge, I think. Hell, I doubt anyone's even able to live around here anymore. Never thought I'd say it, but good thing we've got so much mako in us, otherwise we'd probably be choking or something right now." His boot squelched in some mud, fetid and shit-smelling, and the effort it took to pull it free ended up drenching his pant leg past the ankle with disgusting greenish water. "Maybe we should have tried taking the mountains through or something... but cutting through the swamps would have been even worse, I bet. You know, there's this old motto, Cloud... if it ain't broken, don't fix it. Well, Shinra's is if it's broken, it doesn't matter what the hell you do, 'cuz you can't break it again. Jeez, look at all of this--"

Their surroundings did seem to be gradually improving, though. Soon they broke free of the muddy wastelands and emerged in grassy plains, silent, ghostly and leading right towards the sea beyond them. Zack didn't think much about the path they took -- he assumed they'd cut past the nearest village at some point and sweep towards the hills above Midgar, then slip down into the city, but right now, it took most of his effort to concentrate on Sephiroth's back ahead of him. If he wasn't so sure that the other man wasn't just going to arrest them when they got back to Midgar, he might have even been glad there was someone else here to focus on details, while he just focused on getting his wasted muscles to keep on moving. Five years in a tube hadn't atrophied them completely, but that was just because his cells were saturated with mako. He was definitely weaker, though, and it was hard to tell just how weak he'd get before it started improving.

"I've never been out towards the beach before, though. Guess there's a first time for everything, huh, Cloud? You know, maybe we should take Aerith once we get to Midgar and travel the world... I mean, actually enjoy it. There are a lot of neat places to go, so long as we keep away from Shinra and use pseudonyms, I guess... We could snowboard up on the North Continent, you know, past Icicle Inn... check out all those new age hippies in Cosmo Canyon... swim on the beach on Costa del Sol, and you can pick up chicks there, too, don't you think? Hey, you're... drinking age now, huh...? Maybe you wouldn't be so shy with a few drinks in you... but I bet you're a sleepy drunk, for some reason...Of course... um... with all the mako and stuff, getting drunk's probably not even possible... but hey, you could win all the bets in bars you wanted, just by going in and drinking big surfer guys under the table... whew," Zack paused to arm sweat off his forehead with his free hand, then continued trudging after Sephiroth. "...It's hot out, isn't it? Feels like Gongaga... hey, we could visit there, too. My parents would love you and Aerith, I bet... of course, if I went back, my Mom would probably make me do all the dishes again, and I'd have to get up and repair the roof and do all kinds of housework... Huh, maybe I could convince Aerith to do it..."

Talking expended energy, Zack decided, so he fell silent for a while, catching his breath. Still, he couldn't maintain it for long. "It's like a vacuum around here. You know what vacuums do, Cloud? They suck. This place sucks. Way too quiet... on humid crappy days like this, we'd always go out and catch bull frogs in Gongaga. It was fun to go splashing around in the swamps, so long as you didn't run into any leeches or ticks or something..."

To his surprise, Sephiroth came to a stop, giving him a few seconds to catch up. They were now close enough to the beach to smell the salt water, but Zack thought he caught another whiff of Mako. "Don't tell me Shinra's dumping shit out here, too."

"...It'd probably be better if you stayed silent. Why do you keep on talking to him, anyway?" Sephiroth asked, in a completely matter-of-fact tone, demonstrating little except the fact that he was about as empathetic as a brick. Zack came to a stop, placed Cloud down gently, and stood panting for a moment, hands on his knees.

"...Well, I probably have just as good a chance of getting a response from him as I do you."

Sephiroth just looked at him. Those eyes were impossible to read

"...Besides... if I keep on talking, maybe... he'll come out of it, or... he'll respond, or something. I don't know."

"Your voice carries. You might also attract unwanted attention."

"Too late." Zack muttered. "So, are we stopping for lunch?"

"...For five minutes."

"Okay. Man, you're... a real slave-driver. But I guess I understand." Zack plopped down roughly. "We're not going very quickly, I know, and there's still a long way to go."

For five minutes, he didn't see Sephiroth -- but he didn't see a whole lot else, either. Zack's vision kept on fading in and fading out, almost like he was about ready to fall asleep. It might have been mako withdrawal again, or maybe just exhaustion, from having traveled nearly twenty-four hours a day for only god knew how many days just to get this far, all without being caught by Shinra or eaten by wild animals. Sephiroth returned silently, reappearing back through the long grasses that led up to the beach. Zack jerked back into something closer to wakefulness as soon as the other SOLDIER came to stand a few feet away from them.

"...See any signs of anything? Shinra, or... monsters, something like that?" Zack asked, squinting up at Sephiroth.

"There are no monsters. No signs of Shinra, either. Cutting through the wastelands was a good decision. It threw them off the trail."

"...Yeah, it was Cloud's idea. I think... actually, I thought about cutting through the mountains instead, but I knew I wouldn't be able to keep my footing on some of those crappy old paths and carry Cloud at the same time."

Sephiroth looked at him blankly for a moment, before glancing at Cloud -- and again, Zack saw something odd there. He'd noticed it even last night, how whenever Sephiroth's eyes fell on Cloud, something strange and inscrutable seemed to pass over his face, so fleeting that Zack was sure no one else would have even noticed it -- but Zack was a grade A people-watcher, and the usual SOLDIER asshole was the usual stoic asshole, giving him even more experience with people like Sephiroth, who fit both descriptions like a glove.

"...Look..." Zack began. "...You keep on giving Cloud weird looks."

The other man's face was hard to read -- but he looked surprised at having been called on it for a fleeting second. Zack continued in a flat tone, straightening up and putting his hand to the hilt of his sword, still strapped across his back.

"Listen, if you're here to take Cloud and kill me, or... if you've got some other plan, we may as well not even go any further. I'm tired of stupid charades and not being let in on other people's plans, 'specially when they involve me. If that's what is it, let's just get this over with now. If you're going to be trouble further on down the line, I'd rather kill you now and be on my way. Or maybe you'd rather avoid a fight and be on _your _way, because it isn't going to be pretty." Bluffing, of course, all the while. Zack very highly doubted he could take on anyone SOLDIER level right now, let alone MP-level. Even putting up a pretense was kind of a stupid move, he supposed. The other man plainly saw right through it.

"If I really wanted to attack you right now, I could have done it while you were still standing around and bluffing."

"What are you, my drill-instructor? He said the same thing. Didn't seem to matter, though. You'd still be hard-pressed to find a SOLDIER better than me... maybe. When did you join, anyway? Sounds like you were a SOLDIER five years ago--"

"--If I were here to kill you, I would have done it already."

"Yeah, I guess." This was really exhausting, Zack decided. "...If you were out to kill me and leave him to die, or kill me in the process of killing him -- 'cuz that'd have to happen, you see -- you'd probably be the kind of sadistic guy who led me on for a while, then backstabbed me when I least expected it... okay, maybe I'm paranoid. That's just the kind of thing Hojo might send somebody to do. Did Hojo send you? Is this... don't tell me this isn't all just some kind of real world test or something. God, I am so tired of this Shinra shit..."

Sephiroth looked at him for a moment, unreadable, before turning back towards the grasses. "It's the hottest part of the day, and you're feverish. Stay in the shade for a while."

"...Huh?" Before he could question the man any further, Sephiroth abruptly slipped away through the grasses again. Zack frowned wearily, almost appalled by how tired he was -- his muscles felt like lead, the back of his throat burned, and when he shut his eyes the lids seemed to burn into them -- but almost a little amused. This Sephiroth guy either said nothing at all, or snapped everything out like an order, but always a little quietly -- and it was kinda funny, in a way. Zack pulled Cloud close to him and started drifting off, thinking that it was unwise to trust the other man this much, but he was just _so tired _--

-- Zack jerked awake, not even sure if time had even passed. When he looked up at the night sky, though, he scowled. A few minutes seemed to have turned into several hours, and around him, there was no sign of anyone except Cloud, lying quietly on his side and staring with unseeing eyes. Zack ruffled Cloud's hair a bit, almost unconsciously, and let out a sigh.

"Not a bad night, huh, Cloud? Much cooler than it was earlier," Zack muttered, before putting the back of his hand to Cloud's forehead on a whim. To his surprise, the skin didn't feel feverish at all, not like it'd been before. Zack touched his own forehead, then touched Cloud's again, wondering if perhaps the poor kid was finally coming out of whatever mako-induced hell he'd been in since their escape. Not that he looked any better -- his eyes revealed the same glaring sea of blue, pinprick pupils, and emptiness.

Maybe he wasn't coming out. Maybe Cloud was just a husk, and if that was the case, Zack wondered if maybe the universe, the gods, or whatever it was out there were all really just fucking _sick_. Groaning and trying not to think about it, Zack stumbled to his feet a little. He felt better, with some rest, and now that the air was cooler, his fever, too, seemed to have abated. His muscles still felt stringy, though, and a little rubbery in some places, definitely inconsistent. Maybe he could take the usual poorly-trained Shinra idiot in a fight, but SOLDIER, or even the Turks... it was hard to say. Then again, maybe the situation wasn't so dire, he decided. They weren't traveling alone anymore, and --

"...Where the hell is that guy, anyway?"

On the ground, Cloud let out a soft gurgling noise. Zack looked around, seeing that all signs pointed to the two of them being the only ones around. Nothing else even moved but the grasses, rippling a little and shining silver with the pale light of the moon and stars. Zack didn't dare call out, but after a while of circling around and seeing nothing, he scowled and moved Cloud in a sitting position.

"Okay, Cloud. Try to look tough for a while, like you'll beat the crap out of anyone who comes and tries to bother you. I'm going to go look around for Sephiroth, real quick. If we don't find him, I guess we'll just have to continue on our way." Zack straightened up, studying Cloud. He wondered if perhaps he was some form of crazy for a few seconds, then shrugged. Whether he was or not, it didn't really make a difference. Zack really didn't want to start with all the self-introspection nonsense right now, because if he began probing around in his subconscious, things were going to get ugly fast. Cloud didn't need that. _He _didn't need that.

Zack passed through the waist-high grasses and reeds, looking around in irritation. Nothing moved, and he wondered if just maybe the world had ended without him knowing about it -- but then he heard or maybe just sensed something, nearby, and began tracking down to the little valley of rocks that led towards the ocean shore, a few miles below. Zack started his way out into the open, and paused, before fading back into the tall grasses just as suddenly, keeping low. He didn't know why he had the immediate temptation to hide -- it was just Sephiroth, standing a few yards below and leaning his back against the rock wall, arms crossed, looking intensely irritated about something.

There didn't seem to be anyone else around, and maybe Sephiroth was counting on that, too -- because his frown deepened, and he actually started talking to himself. Zack cocked his head, curious and a little disturbed.

"...I told you to stop worrying." Sephiroth's voice was low and didn't carry far, barely more than a tense mutter -- and he seemed to be talking aloud without actually being aware of it. Zack wondered if there was a radio, somewhere, or a person unseen, behind where Sephiroth stood.

"...Well, if you had any real power, you'd just send me back in time to kill his mother. But you don't... and I don't think it's necessary. You want the girl protected, right? Let HIM do it. He has more than enough reason, don't you think?"

Zack froze. Sephiroth actually seemed to pause, as if listening to something, and each time the look of irritation on his face deepened -- and when he spoke again, Zack could tell he was actually purposely taunting someone.

"Thousands of generations of knowledge, and you have the patience and maturity of a three-year old sociopath."

Zack narrowed his eyes, deciding that even if he didn't understand what the hell was going on, that sounded like a pretty bad insult. Sephiroth just stood for a moment, looking a little satisfied, and a little resigned, like he'd unwittingly just stepped into the line of fire -- and Zack almost smirked, thinking about all the times he'd mouthed off right to Shinra's face, and all of their stupid little attempts at vengeance -- mostly monetary, because the higher-ups in charge of his paycheck rarely thought in terms other than money and power. But whoever Sephiroth had chosen to give the proverbial middle finger to was no petty tyrant.

The other man dropped to his knees, clutching his head in both hands, his jaw clenched, the movement so sudden it made Zack jump. Sephiroth cringed and bent over as if something kept on pressing him down, then gritted his teeth, flinching mightily though oddly silent all the while. Good for him, Zack thought -- not giving whoever it was the satisfaction of crying out. Putting caution aside, Zack leapt out of cover and sprinted towards the other man.

"Hey! Are you okay?"

Zack paused, with just enough awareness to throw his hands in the air. He'd clearly taken Sephiroth off-guard, and the other man didn't seem the type to take chances -- his sword was out, now, pointing right at Zack's throat. He was... fast, just a _little _fast, somehow quick enough in drawing his ridiculously large katana to take Zack by surprise. His own reflexes were nothing like they'd been, but he also marveled a little that he hadn't even seen the other draw his stupid sword. Zack looked down the razor-sharp silver of the blade, and swallowed.

"Um. It's just me. Hi."

Sephiroth lowered his sword, now expressionlessly. "I didn't see you coming."

"...It's because I'm stealthy. Like a ninja."

The other just stared at him.

"...Okay, so," Zack decided this situation could use a little levity, perhaps. "Tell me. What do the voices in _your _head tell you to do?"

Alarmingly, Sephiroth cringed again -- grabbing his head briefly -- before getting back to his feet, managing to look completely unaffected and looking at Zack like _he _was the suspicious one.

"...Well, looks like you weren't exactly getting along with them, anyway. That's a good thing, I think. Here's a good rule to live by: when in doubt, DON'T go along with the voices in your head. From what I've seen, it usually always leads to trouble."

"...We should move again," Sephiroth didn't even seem to acknowledge any of what had just happened, and Zack could see why. Still, something in Zack really wanted to pry and pry and pry until he got to the bottom of this one, because the truth was, he never wanted to be blind-sided by anything ever again.

"Look, uh, I won't judge, if you just tell me what that was all about. Who's mother's gonna die, and what's all this about evil three-year-olds again? And who's this girl you were referring to? Do you have a girlfriend--?" He already knew the answer to that question, though it was amusing to see the exceedingly flat look Sephiroth gave him. He'd pegged the other guy perfectly -- typical SOLDIER-lifer, who had apparently never been taught to take himself less-than-seriously. Before Sephiroth could respond, though, Zack heard distant footsteps and a sliding noise, like a body slipping through the grass --

"Shit, CLOUD!" He didn't need time to think. Zack turned and sprinted back towards where he'd left the kid, gritting his teeth and feeling stupid, inattentive, and maybe even a total failure for forgetting that annoying one weirdo traveling companion was much less important than protecting the main reasons he was making this journey in the first place -- Cloud, who couldn't even move on his own --

Two men in trooper uniforms were doing the dragging, while Cloud didn't move or resist -- obviously. Both men looked up as Zack leapt into the clearing, and he barely saw the whites of their eyes before the Buster Sword took them both out like a knife through butter -- disturbingly enough. Zack whirled around, seeing a line of troopers behind him, popping up from all over the place and directing rifles right at him, faces grim and pale with concentration and satisfaction -- a trap. Of course. Zack whirled around, Preparing to take a few bullets, and hoping they wouldn't slow his momentum down enough to keep him from ripping them to pieces --

-- Sephiroth struck like a silver-black-thunderbolt, something Zack barely perceived and only realized when all of the troopers limply slid over, looks on their faces making it plain they didn't even know they were dead. A few of them were still hitting the ground when Sephiroth sheathed his sword and turned to look in Zack's direction.

Zack turned, dropping to his knees in front of Cloud and looking him over -- checking for gunshot wounds first, then bruises, than scratches, then finally letting out a sigh and pulling the poor kid into a quick hug.

"Sorry, Cloud... I didn't even want to let those fuckers touch you..."

"They were aiming for you," Sephiroth remarked, and Zack straightened up, leaving Cloud in a sitting position.

"Yeah, I know. I really don't know why. Hojo did way more to Cloud than he did to me..." Zack trailed off, as Sephiroth knelt and pulled one of the trooper's helmets off. "...Hey, you know, I really am beginning to think about trusting you, even if you're crazy or something. So, uh, don't try to backstab me, because I'd really like to --" Zack spotted the face of the trooper, and paused, arching an eyebrow. "Now, THAT doesn't make a lot of sense."

"It must be Hojo's work."

The troopers Sephiroth had killed all had the same face, actually -- plain, but their open and death-glazed eyes were all the shade of mako, and though it was hard to tell in the dark, he guessed their light-colored hair had a definite silvery tint. Zack looked between Sephiroth's face and the troopers, than shrugged. "...Coloring's the same, but then, someone with really terminal mako poisoning would probably look like you, anyway. But you're right. Some byproduct of Hojo's, huh?"

Sephiroth, though, seemed to have something in mind, because he pulled one of the trooper's gloves off and looked at the back of his hand. His silvery eyebrows lowered, and Zack took a few steps towards him and saw it.

"...Ah... 'J-23,' huh? Yep, definitely Hojo. He's the only scientist that actually bothers tattooing his human subjects. Well, it makes sense that he'd send some of his own work out to get us back. These guys even showed some rudimentary intelligence and planning abilities, so I guess they're a rousing success, so far as Shinra's concerned..."

"You fell for the trick, though, didn't you?"

Zack scowled, and as he knelt to study the dead troopers with what felt like an extreme morbid interest, Sephiroth went over to the others. Suddenly, Cloud started making noises.

Whirling around, Zack stumbled in an effort to get over to the kid, who lied twitching and thrashing weakly, reaching upwards with one near-skeletally thin hand and gagging, his face twisted in an expression that was definitely terror. Zack threw himself to his knees in front of Cloud, not really having a clue what to do or what was going on now.

"Cloud? Hey, Cloud! It's all right! It's just me! Cloud!?" Behind him, someone stumbled -- and Zack looked back just in time to see Sephiroth start acting weird, too -- his hand flashed to his temple and he grimaced, before turning away abruptly and putting some distance between them. As soon as he did, Cloud fell silent -- limbs becoming limp, face going slack, and slumping right over again, like nothing had ever happened.

"...What the hell?" Zack finally muttered, holding Cloud gently, and turning to look towards Sephiroth. The other had his back turned. It occurred to him, all too plainly, that other than the occasional odd look, Sephiroth had made a pointed effort of keeping his distance from Cloud up until now. "...Is there something you're not telling me?" Zack finally asked, in Sephiroth's direction. Cloud, obviously, had no way of telling anyone what he was thinking.

"...It's nothing."

"Oh. Oooh, yeah, I'm sure, it's nothing. No, really. Want to try again? That's not a good answer."

Sephiroth had his hand on his sword hilt, for no real reason, and looked as tense as a loaded spring -- but Zack watched him forcibly relax and turn around, his eyes suddenly looking about a megawatt brighter than before, almost lantern-like in the dark.

"I should probably keep my distance from him...he doesn't react well to it."

"Yeah, that was definitely some kind of reaction... I've never even seen him do anything like that... What's the deal? I think you know something, so spit it out. Come on."

"...It could be that... he notices something familiar about me. After all... I'm Hojo's son."

Zack might have said that even the night around them fell silent in the aftershock of that particular revelation. "...Seriously? You think that's it...? I... I don't really see the family semblance, at all. Do you, uh... do you take on more after your mother?"

"...Probably."

"...You know," Zack began, after a moment. "...I'd heard that his son died when he was a kid, but... well, I guess that's not important, I'm dead on paper, too. Who'd lie about something like that? Cripes. If I had the choice between being some kind of monstrously inhuman thingy grown in a reactor core, or Hojo's son -- I'd go with the reactor every time."

Sephiroth just looked at him for a moment, almost frowning. "It doesn't bother you?"

"What? That you're Hojo's son?"

He nodded.

"Well, look..." Zack smirked. "...I'm pretty well-acquainted with Hojo myself, actually. And knowing what I know… Call me crazy, but... that's almost kind of reassuring. I've heard all the stories. There's probably no one, 'cept maybe Cloud, with a better reason for hating Hojo than you do. So, should we get moving?" Zack knelt, lifting Cloud over his shoulder again, feeling a bit of temporary adrenaline-tinged strength return to him. It probably wouldn't last, but he'd be glad to at least ride it out. "I mean, I'm… a little shocked and all… but I guess that's okay."

Sephiroth just stood and looked at him for a moment – and finally, for the first time, just the barest semblance of a smirk passed over his face, before he turned and started back towards the long grasses, leading the way. "If you think that's shocking... I'll tell you about my mother some day."

Zack arched an eyebrow, than laughed. "Ha... oh, wow, I don't even want to imagine what kind of woman would want to make it with Hojo. Whew, that's gonna give me nightmares... you must have one hell of a messed up family."

Sephiroth scoffed quietly, and Zack smirked, though for some reason his grip tightened around Cloud just a little, as a kind of subconscious uncertainty stole over him. Maybe, just maybe, he was still being too trusting -- just like he'd been with Shinra for years, and all the other things that had gone wrong with the people around him -- but then, this was the kind of weird, sick world where knowing his strange traveling companion was the son of the scientist whose lab he'd escaped from was actually a _huge _relief.

**a/n**

1. These chapters keep on getting longer than they should be, and this was supposed to be the beginning of chapter four – not the entirety of it. Oh well.

2. Stay tuned next week for something extra-special: double chapter post! It'll be an attempt to compensate for slow pacing, anyway.

3. Please leave a reviews/comment, I'd really like to read any kind of feedback you have on this. And thanks to everyone who's reviewed or otherwise expressed interest (faves, alerts, C2s, etc.) so far.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter Five**

"You know, you can always tell when you're getting close to Midgar. You can smell it from about twenty miles away."

Sephiroth came to a stop at the top of a small incline and looked back towards Zack, who limped, unsteadily, still lugging Strife along without complaint. His face was red and flushed, though, and he paused on occasion to wipe sweat out of his eyes. Above them, the summer sun beat down, and the low valleys around Kalm sweltered in near-triple-digit heat.

"We're probably closer to forty five miles away, actually. We haven't passed Kalm yet."

"Hmmm. Kalm, huh? You know, I've never actually been there. Isn't it just a little hole-in-the-wall mining town?" Zack asked, stumbling to a stop a few feet away from Sephiroth.

"Yes."

"...I guess it'd probably be a bad idea to stop at the inn there."

For a moment, the two of them looked at one another. Zack didn't wait for an answer, sighing instead and continuing onwards, his steps dragging. "Never mind. Guess we should just keep moving..."

Sephiroth guessed that Zack was somewhere near the peak of mako withdrawal, now, feverish and fighting to keep from trembling with every step -- but no matter what his condition was, their options were still limited. The Cetra, despite their earlier histrionics, were oddly silent. He almost expected them to start calling for Zack's head again, now that they were so close to Midgar, but nothing except a distant angry rumble gave any indication as to what they were feeling. Perhaps they'd decided to simply watch, and see how things turn out -- he already knew their understanding of the flow of events only slightly surpassed his own. No matter how much they raged, they were not gods.

Why they wanted Zack dead in the first place wasn't even entirely clear to him. The man who had once been his subordinate -- in another time, it seemed -- certainly didn't lack in raw power, and when it came to Aerith and Cloud, two people that the Planet owed a tremendous debt, he was fiercely, almost insanely protective. He was also powerful -- if the Planet really wanted to goad humans into self-destruction, there was no one better to have around than a SOLDIER First Class. Then again, perhaps their eerily watchful and almost foreboding silence meant that the Cetra, for once, agreed with him -- Zack was a valuable resource, someone better off alive and on the surface of the planet instead of assimilated into the Lifestream.

But maybe that was all arrogance. Even if the Cetra decided they wanted him alive, it wasn't going to make any difference if Mako withdrawal overwhelmed him and he heat-stroked out here, in the burning summer heat. Sephiroth kept a short distance ahead of Zack and Cloud, now pensive. Stopping in Kalm was a terrible idea -- none of them were inconspicuous enough to sneak into town without causing some kind of stir. Even if just an innkeeper saw them, inn keeps gossiped, and Shinra ears were everywhere.

"...We're traveling really slowly," Zack remarked, around the fourth time Sephiroth stopped and waited for him to catch up. "...But... it's kinda weird. How come there are no monsters or anything? Usually the wildlife around here is _really _irritating. I think it's all the mako in the air, it seems to drive them a little nuts."

Sephiroth shook his head, impassively. "Maybe Shinra troopers swept the area recently."

"...Yeah, I guess..." Zack murmured, then squinted into the rippling heat ahead of them, raising one hand to shield his eyes. "...Can't see it yet, but I don't think I've ever wanted to see Midgar more. Whaddaya think it's gonna be? A few more days, maybe?"

"It depends." In all honesty, Sephiroth had noticed the odd lack of monsters, too -- and he knew already that Shinra's pest-control was nowhere near this competent, no matter what the timeline. He thought perhaps the Cetra had something to do with it, at first, but he doubted they cared enough to waste their power on something so convenient, and then he thought that maybe the three of them together were unnatural enough to dissuade the local wildlife from even trying.

The planet, though, remained silent. Sephiroth didn't think the Cetra would bother answering if he asked them about it, anyway. By late afternoon, the outline of Kalm's roofs appeared over the rise of a hill, not more than a few miles away. Sephiroth paused and waited for Zack to catch up, as the other trudged up the slight incline -- moving so slowly he barely advanced at all, and finally coming to a stop and swaying a bit, clearly fighting a losing battle just to stay on his feet. Given his pale skin and his slightly glassy eyes, there wasn't much strength left in him -- and with Cloud still unconscious, there was no hope of reprieve any time soon. Still, Zack forced a smile on his face.

"...Kalm. Means Midgar's just about a day away, if we were traveling normally... almost there, Cloud. Just a little further." He looked up at Sephiroth, next. "...So, it's almost night. We gonna keep moving, Seph?"

For some unfathomable reason, being called 'Seph' drew out more memories, nothing more useful than meaningless reminiscences of a time that no longer existed. Sephiroth still couldn't keep a slight frown off his face, though Zack saw it and misread the look with a laugh.

"Ha, you mind if I call you that, Seph? How about _Sephy_?"

"That's not my name," Sephiroth answered as levelly as he could, all the while trying to suppress whatever memories were trying to emerge. Zack just looked at him and smirked.

"Okay, Mr. Sephiroth. That's a mouthful, but I'll try not to forget it."

That did it -- a memory floated to the surface, of Zack with a younger face and the same smile, standing and facing him somewhere on the training grounds in Midgar. It had been nearly the very first day of Zack's training as a SOLDIER -- and maybe only four or five years after his own. The other SOLDIER cadets and SOLDIER members tended to ignore him, studying him only at a distance and with a mix of awe and aversion. Zack had obliviously walked right up to him. It was an old memory, nearly forgotten -- when had it been? In a moment of clarity, he realized Zack had probably been about fourteen, and he had been maybe eighteen, at most.

_"Hey, you're Sephiroth, SOLDIER First Class, huh? That's kind of a mouthful. How about I call you Seph?"_

_"That's not my name."_

_"...Yeah, but it'd make a good nickname, wouldn't it?"_

_"Why do I need a nickname?"_

_"I dunno. I know you're First Class and all, but you _can't _be that much older than I am. Can you? So, you're just like one of the guys. I'll call you Seph."_

_"...That doesn't make any sense."_

_"...Okay, fine, Mr. Sephiroth."_

It was an inane conversation, and an inane little memory -- and he realized the only reason he afforded it any kind of significance whatsoever was because it was when he and Zack had first met. Even if Zack had more or less irritated him right from the start, that particular memory had been important enough to file away. Purely by association, it emerged now -- even if it had never happened in this world.

Suddenly, Sephiroth's clear mental image of that day on the training grounds in Midgar faded entirely, and he cringed -- hands going to his forehead reactively, while an entirely new kind of pain laced through him, sharp and severe and yet forceful all at once, something akin to slamming into a brick wall inside of his own head. The world blurred and swirled before him, and when the pain faded, he was on his knees again, clutching his head and choking back sudden, intense nausea. When he glanced upwards, he saw Zack had placed Cloud on the ground a few feet away and now stood right above him, half-reaching out, his eyes huge.

"...Sephiroth?"

He stared at Zack for a moment, feeling as if his mind was struggling to process something -- then he cringed and keeled over again, clutching his head as another stab of pain knifed through it, seeming to shoot right through the center of his skull. The pain persisted for just a few minutes longer, than faded.

Sephiroth forced open his eyes, then got to his feet. Zack took a step back, careful to keep some distance between them -- though with evident concern written all over his face, probably undeserved -- and Sephiroth felt dizziness before realizing that in a single moment, he'd forgotten where he even was. Now he looked at Zack, thinking of their previous conversation, and then drawing a complete blank.

The harder and harder he tried to recall what he'd been thinking about just seconds before the more and more pressure built inside of his head, until he finally had to turn away, abruptly, startling Zack so badly the other man leapt backwards. Whatever memory had came to the surface just a few minutes past now seemed buried, and trying to recall it, or even recall why he'd been thinking about, was like trying to unearth it from underneath ten feet of concrete, bashing his mind to pieces with the effort... and then finding nothing there.

Deep down, and from a great distance, he heard them. The Cetra were laughing.

(...What now?)

_"You don't understand your punishment at all."_

(...Why can't I remember...?)

_"Whatever memory you're trying to recall never happened at all."_

(...You're meddling with it... somehow...)

Again, the Cetra laughed, and Sephiroth, inexplicably, felt the first inklings of something that really was like fear, a feeling almost entirely foreign to him.

_"You never existed in this world. Why should you have memories of anything else?"_

(...But if I forget...)

_"It's like none of it ever happened. Right?"_

"Hey, SEPHIROTH!"

Zack yelled right next to his ear, and Sephiroth practically fell sideways before getting to his feet again, not even realizing that something had knocked him down. Zack, pale and wide-eyed, stood staring at him.

"...Are you okay? You blanked out and fell over all of a sudden..."

"...I'm fine," Sephiroth finally said.

"...Yeah, but you don't look so well. You're not mako withdrawing or something, are you?"

"...I don't know. It isn't important..." Sephiroth looked up towards the sky, seeing the first stars were now beginning to appear. Even with the sun disappearing below the horizon, though, the night still sweltered, and it would take hours before it even began to cool. Zack still looked as miserable as ever even if he was worried and alert now, and Sephiroth felt the first hint of something like exhaustion. He didn't really know why, either.

"...That's the second time you've gone all weird on us," Zack pointed out, "just imagine if some of those Shinra chuckle-fucks had chosen right now to come walking over the ridge there, or something. In the shape I'm in, I don't think I could look out for the both of you."

Sephiroth rubbed his temples for a moment, before pausing and looking at Zack, vaguely perplexed. He realized he was being _lectured_…

…by Zack. Of all the people in the world --

Deciding not to spend any time pondering the utterly unlikely situation that had led to all of this, he sighed and turned back towards Kalm, trying to catch his bearings as the night around him deepened. "Let's head closer to town. Once we're there, I'll look around while you wait outside."

"...Oh? Are we gonna stop there for the night?"

"We'll see," Sephiroth said, guardedly.

"...You sure you won't stand out too much, going into town?"

"If I don't want to be seen, I won't be seen."

"...Guess I've gotta take your word for it. Just don't take too long, or I'll start thinking that you've gone into town just to round up some Shinra guys to come out and get Cloud and I." Zack paused and yawned, then continued in a heavy, sleepy tone. "...Actually... you know what, I'm not that worried about that stuff anymore. I'm sure you've got your reasons..."

Sephiroth left Zack and Cloud at the base of a hill underneath a tree, surrounded by shrubbery, and started down the path towards Kalm. Within a few minutes he stood in the outskirts of the city, keeping away from the street lights and moving silently through the alleyways, looking for all signs of Shinra or anything else unusual. After just a few minutes of moving throughout town, though, the lack of anything unusual whatsoever started to seem odd, and he realized it.

A peek in the bar revealed no patrons. He saw no lights in the homes, heard no sounds of people or animals, and saw no movement, anywhere. Shinra wasn't in this town -- and there were no people, period. Kalm sat silent, abandoned, and fully intact.

There weren't any bodies, either. Sephiroth opened the door to the bar and the town's single shop, then backtracked to the inn, never seeing, hearing, or smelling even the slightest trace of people. When he finally walked right down the center of the town and nothing sprang out of him, he concluded that Kalm was completely empty of any human. Only the mice that lived in people's homes and a barn owl sitting somewhere on one of the roofs remained.

He stepped inside of one house, finding the door unlocked and looking around inside. A small living room housed a television and a shoddy couch. Pictures of an old man and his wife at various stages of old age and a few family pictures from years ago -- sons, daughters, and a dog -- lined the walls, books sat on shelves, and clothes still hung in the closets. Nothing had been packed. The eerily undisturbed state of everything in sight didn't suggest a planned evacuation, and it didn't seem like the people had fled in a sudden terror or panic, either. The people of Kalm had simply vanished.

Sephiroth didn't like it at all, but after checking more houses, and combing the empty rooms at the inn, he decided these disappearances had happened far too cleanly to be the work of Shinra, and that if it was a trap, it was also entirely too competently staged. Sephiroth walked to the center of the town and paused, looking around a final time, unsettled -- but seeing few other options, given the state Zack was in, and knowing all the while that he, too, was starting to feel tired. Sephiroth started towards the outskirts of town, back to Zack and Cloud.

**

* * *

**

Around eleven in the evening, Midgar standard central time, a summer thunderstorm slowly rolled into the area, rumbling as gusts of wind drove little splatters of rain against the window.

"Good thing we're not out in that shit," Zack muttered, from where he laid sprawled across a shoddy twin-sized bed. "Rain makes it hard to see ambushes. Shinra troopers might be incompetent, but they've got better rain gear than we do. Of course, I remember the immense clusterfucks we'd find ourselves in back in Wutai, whenever it started raining. And it rained _all damn year_, seemed like." After a moment, though, Zack rolled on his side, turning to face Sephiroth. He sat on the windowsill a few feet away, looking out the window pensively. The third person in the room, Cloud, lied in a semi-fetal position on the second twin bed, motionless, eyes still wide, mako-glazed, and staring.

"So, Sephiroth. Were you in Wutai?"

It would have been easier just not to respond, but Sephiroth looked at Zack almost reflexively and shook his head. Zack just smiled.

"...You know, sometimes I get the feeling you're not being totally honest with me. But... well, okay, there are _so _many holes in your story, I really don't even know where to begin." Oddly enough, Zack didn't even seem all that bothered -- more curious than anything else, maybe even a little amused. "I do know that if I'd seen a guy like you at some point, I'd remember it. I've got a decent memory for faces, even if names slip my mind sometimes. Not that I'm prying or anything, you were supposed to have died, like... more than twenty years ago? So, what's the real story there? 'Cuz you're clearly not dead, as far as I can see. Did he take you away somewhere else to experiment on, or something?"

"...Yes."

"...You're an awful liar, man. Just awful, really," Despite the criticism, Zack had a grin on his face. "Really, if this was a performance art and I was grading it, I'd give you a D minus. The only reason that's higher than an F is because it actually seems like you're trying."

In all actuality, Sephiroth really wasn't. He already knew he couldn't lie convincingly enough to insert himself back into a world where he'd died at the age of seven, and he also knew that the insane truth of the matter would only have sounded like the biggest and most blatant lie of all.

The two of them were silent for a while. Zack closed his eyes as if to sleep, and Sephiroth looked out the window, watching the rain gather in puddles on the muddy road, and tracing the forking lines of lightning in the sky to the east. For just a moment, he almost swore he could see the outline of Midgar, the towering Shinra HQ and its seven surrounding Mako reactors. After a few minutes of silence inside and the raging storm outside, Zack spoke up again.

"...Hojo said a lot of things, to Cloud and I. The guy couldn't shut up if his life depended on it, and yet very little of what he actually said was worth a listen. He mentioned his son dozens and dozens of time. Never by name, though. How he would have been an unsurpassed SOLDIER. How he would have done all kinds of ridiculous things, like... take the world in his hands, and fulfill the promise of the ancients -- oh man, it was such a load of bullshit. But his son died. So..."

"...I didn't die. I escaped... somehow. Hojo doesn't know that I'm alive, and nor does anyone else."

"...Then for the past couple decades--"

"--I've been living in isolation."

"And now you're back..."

"...To destroy Shinra, eventually." Shinra, and everything else -- the Cetra reminded him, with a distant angry rumble, telling him not to get "sidetracked" by his own personal feelings. He turned towards the window and scowled a little, before looking back at Zack. The other now sat cross-legged, peering at him thoughtfully.

"Is that so?" Zack asked, his tone low. "...Ya know, now that I think about it, I wouldn't have any problem going against the Shinra at all. So long as Cloud and Aerith were safe..." His voice seemed strange to Sephiroth, and he realized -- he'd never heard Zack sound quite so angry and bloodthirsty as he did now.

"...Aerith's the last ancient. Cloud is clearly one of Hojo's most important experiments. As long as Shinra continues to exist, it'll be a threat to both of them."

"...You're right, of course." Zack murmured. "...What should I do?"

"Destroy them."

Zack looked at Sephiroth for a moment, studying his face closely. "You sure look like you're playing devil's advocate over there."

"Shinra's the one that started all this carnage, aren't they? Just what do you plan on doing when you get back to Midgar, anyway? You'll find Aerith, and then what? Shinra will still continue to chase you."

"...You're right about that, too. But... you're forgetting. Shinra's the entire world, basically. And I'm just one guy."

"You should be able to figure something out. You were the top-ranking SOLDIER, weren't you?"

"Yeah. Though I'm still wondering just who the hell you are. Really."

"I already told you."

"Not enough." Zack muttered, before lying back down on the bed, seemingly tired. "...But I think you're right. The only way to keep Cloud and Aerith safe is to destroy whatever's after them. And there are so, so many people at Shinra who I'd like to rip a new one, I wouldn't even know where to start... no, I know. Hojo, definitely. Then the president, then all those smarmy bastards on his council, and maybe the vice president, too, though Rufus never really gave me a specific reason to hate him. I think he even funded a few anti-Shinra terrorist cells, back in the day, just to try to throw off his father long enough to grab the company for himself. Of course, I could talk about this all I want..."

Sephiroth said nothing, only watching as Zack rolled over and came to a conclusion. "... I would like to rip Shinra's empire right out from under them. I'd like that very much." He sounded impassive, now, even amused -- but Sephiroth realized that _this_ Zack had gained the capacity for hatred, somewhere along the line. That wasn't like the Zack he'd known, but that must have only been because he'd never met Zack after Nibelheim.

"...You're pretty obvious, over there," Zack muttered, his voice now sleepy. "I can tell you're pretty much goading me. I'm sure you've got your reasons... but you know, maybe something other than a little voice in my head telling me to destroy Shinra is just the push I need, huh?" A moment later, Zack let out a soft snore.

Sephiroth turned back towards the window.

(...I told you. Don't you think he'll be useful?)

He allowed himself a little smirk of satisfaction, while the Cetra rumbled in what he took to be grudging approval -- but his smirk faded when a soft gurgling noise reminded him of the other person in the room. Cloud Strife had been silent since they'd first tentatively walked into Kalm, but now he made some kind of soft, incoherent murmuring noise that seemed partway between a grunt and a groan of pain. Sephiroth looked at him, but kept his distance – still thinking of what had happened before. If he so much as neared Strife, the Cetra started screaming in his head, incoherently and angrily – but he had no idea why Cloud seemed to react, too, particularly when all of the Cetra's focus seemed so riveted on Sephiroth.

(So then. What's your plan for him? I can already tell you that whatever it is, I could probably think of something better. You wouldn't want him to be killed him, would you?)

No response, and Sephiroth continued, even knowing that he was about to cross a line.

(...What if I killed him anyway? Could you really stop me? Just how much would that derail your plan?)

The Cetra struck him with such force that he smacked roughly to the ground a second later, still a little amazed at how easily they could toss him around even when he wasn't inside the Lifestream. Cloud made another kind of groaning noise, but Zack, deeply exhausted, didn't even stir. It was just as well. Sephiroth choked a little and grabbed at his throat, then tried to stifle a round of hoarse coughing -- and when he drew his hand away from his mouth, he could clearly see strands of mako on his glove, this time.

_"Continuing to test us is not in your best interest. We will not succumb to rage and kill you, as you obviously desire. Nor will we be so forgiving. You will _never _be released from your punishment."_

(But if you keep on torturing me... and if you're even going as far as to alter my memories... what's the point? Eventually, I'll forget what I'm even being punished for.)

Even without being able to see it, he could sense their sickly, sadistic little grin of satisfaction.

_"Yes. That is just one of our many objectives."_

Sephiroth didn't respond, but they could sense his rage and helplessness -- and merely laughed at him, while Zack snored, Cloud continued to twitch and periodically groan, and he remained on the floor, seething with completely unconcealed hatred.

**author's note**

1. As promised, double-chapter this weekend. Chapter six, if it's not already up right now (as you read this), will be posted shortly.


	6. Chapter 6

* * *

**Chapter Six**

Morning dawned cool and rainy, a welcome reprieve from the blistering heat of the last couple days. Even as they set out from town, Kalm remained silent and empty in the gray and rain, and within a few minutes it seemed to disappear into the fog and mists behind them. With its towers and mako reactors stretching towards the gloomy skies above, Midgar loomed before them by midday, not more than fifteen miles away. By nightfall, they'd arrive.

Sephiroth looked at Midgar for what felt like the first time in eons, though he knew that was far from the case, and felt absolutely nothing except a kind of jaded contempt. A brief flash of fury passed over Zack's face. Cloud, like always, saw nothing and said nothing.

To Sephiroth, Midgar meant very little, except that it was the place where he'd been shaped and molded into the perfect SOLDIER by a combination of experimentation and training. He'd been Hojo's life work, but it was disconcerting to think that in this world, Hojo's first successful product had inexplicably died at the age of seven, murdered by an impossible series of circumstances.

Still, the setback hadn't fazed Hojo, as far as Sephiroth could tell. Maybe he'd lost a little bit more of his mind, but SOLDIER and a variety of other pet-projects still seemed just as successful. Sephiroth wasn't sure which was more disturbing -- that the world had mostly gone on the same without him, or that something as drastic as eliminating himself entirely hadn't yet changed much of anything.

But the Cetra wanted him to second-guess himself, and Sephiroth decided not to, knowing all the while that just a little self-introspection might have been enough to send everything tumbling down like a house of cards. It was too early to let them drive him insane.

"So. We're about twelve miles from the nearest slum gate," Zack, who had been strangely silent this morning, finally spoke up around noon. He looked a little worn around the edges, but nowhere near as exhausted as he'd been before their night in Kalm. He was finally around the bend, now well into the recovery from his ordeal. The same couldn't be said for Cloud, though, who still remained slung over Zack's shoulder, motionless, gurgling occasionally. "When do you think we're going to see Shinra?"

"Soon. They won't let us get too close to the city," Sephiroth said. They weaved through barren valleys between rocks, Midgar edging closer with each step. Zack was right -- the smell of exhaust layered over the raw odors of garbage and waste combined with the almost metallic tanginess caused by the mist emitted by the reactors mingled into a distinctive stench, the smell of Midgar towering above them. Sephiroth heard the Cetra rumbling in anger, but for once, it wasn't at him. He almost understood. Shinra's decadence and corruption, writ large across what had once been a peaceful and fertile valley not a hundred years before, seemed even more evident with each step closer to the metropolis.

"...I really don't know how I was ever even able to put it with this place," Zack muttered, sardonically.

They reached the pathway into the valley below, down a narrow rocky canyon between two sheer cliff faces, taking careful steps down the incline. Nearly at the end, Sephiroth noticed the sudden, eerie silence and held up a hand, signaling Zack. The other SOLDIER nodded and went into a crouch, preparing to lower Cloud off his shoulder and draw his sword. Sephiroth continued ahead a few more casual paces, towards the mouth of the valley, and stopped.

The first thing he noticed, when a blast from a fire materia charred the ground in front of him and he leapt back into the mouth of the valley, was that none of their ambushers wore anything remotely resembling military uniforms. The second was that all of their eyes burned the shade of pure mako even if they weren't SOLDIERs, and he drew a quick conclusion: this was some other Shinra pet project, most likely lead by one of Hojo's understudies -- because Sephiroth saw right away how shoddily done it was.

Roughly a hundred fighters with swords, low-level materia, and glowing eyes waited at the point where the small valley opened below, and from behind, a stream of them emerged, moving with inhuman speed towards Zack, Sephiroth, and Cloud, ringing them in completely. Zack let out a calm and exasperated sigh as he laid Cloud down and turned to face the attackers from behind, while Sephiroth faced the other direction, drawing out his sword and wondering just how effective it was going to be, here in this narrow canyon. Their ambushers raced towards them, single-file through the narrow parts of the canyon and proceeded only by the occasional weak blast of materia magic.

"What a pain in the ass," Zack practically drawled. "Are they really going to come at us just like this? And why aren't they wearing uniforms?"

Sephiroth spotted one man amidst the stampede, wearing a dirty mining outfit and hard-hat with a flashlight, and decided to wait until later to point it out to Zack. Clutching his sword with two hands, he lunged as soon as the first three men neared, impaling them in a row like some kind of gruesome kebab before they could even attack, then flicking his sword up and messily decapitating them. Zack just sliced the first two men nearly in half with his Buster Sword, and even if they were back to back, a kind of unspoken plan of action passed between them. Sephiroth charged. So did Zack. Their hapless attackers, somehow expecting they were just going to let themselves be ringed into the tiny canyon, panicked and tried to back out, but it was too late for that.

Sephiroth cut through them. He downed ten or eleven men and vaulted over the bodies before emerging from the mouth of the canyon. Bullets practically rained down where he'd been a second before, and he struck the gunners waiting outside the canyon before they even realized their own failure. Zack emerged from the mouth of the canyon a second later, Cloud over his shoulder and the Buster Sword in his other hand, not even panting.

"Well, SHIT!"

Now that all of Hojo's little pet projects had messily blown the first stage of the attack, the real assault waited. Between the two of them, he and Zack had taken out perhaps twenty men in a matter of seconds, but a good three-hundred awaited, Shinra troopers, the occasional city guard, and a few third-class SOLDIERs.

"Can we take this?" Zack suffered a temporary moment of doubt, and Sephiroth gave him a slight, impassive nod and saw the flash of the other's grin.

Everything exploded into chaos. Most first-class SOLDIERs could move faster than the human eye was capable of following, which meant that most of the people Sephiroth killed went without even realizing it. He dived right through them, cutting a hole through their innards while Zack kept right behind, the Buster Sword swinging in arcs and holding up the vanguard, effective even with the handicap of Cloud on his shoulder.

The low-ranking troopers and gunners started shooting in hysteria, peppering their own with bullets, while the 3rd Classes occasionally made a lucky guess -- vaulting over the heads of others and attacking only to end up impaled on the tip of the Masamune and flicked aside or sliced cleanly in half by the Buster Sword for their efforts. Yet even with Shinra's incompetence, some three-hundred soldiers were far too many to cut through at once. Somewhere in their midst, Sephiroth and Zack ended up almost back-to-back, Cloud slumped on the ground between them. With carnage all around them, Zack managed to flash a quick smile as Sephiroth glanced at him. They were both covered in blood -- and most of it belonged to other people.

"Okay, is _this _it for us?"

"I think it's just at our level."

"...Damn, you're a cocky bastard. I like it."

If Shinra troopers were ever capable of restraint, they might have drawn back and fired guns and materia at both of them -- but the mere sight of the plates and reactors just a few miles ahead and above them testified to the fact that no one in Shinra's entire program knew anything about restraint, patience, or common sense. It was even more evident now. Zack and Sephiroth kept back-to-back, swords flashing and curving in and out of enemy soldiers, circling to meet foes from every angle. Sephiroth, calm in the midst of it all, thought back to Wutai -- in _his_ timeline, when he and Zack had done this very move, standing back to back and facing probably half-as-many charging Wutain Ninja. Zack cracked jokes and shouted taunts at the enemy the entire time, almost reckless in his abandon. The Zack with him now remained silent, but a grim look of near-satisfaction occasionally crossed his face. Sephiroth understood.

A moment later, eerie white spaces formed at the edge of his thoughts, and suddenly another blast of agony so intense he was sure he'd been shot in the face ripped through his head. In the growing haze, he realized the Cetra had erased another memory cleanly from his mind.

(...Maybe it's easier not to think.)

Zack lagged too, for less than a split second, and suddenly they were being crushed under a sea of oncoming Shinra troopers. Sephiroth slew a man with a quick kick to the chin that snapped his head backwards as he fell over, knowing it was too close quarters now for his sword, then ripped three materia from the man's weapon barehanded. Not even bothering to affix it to his weapon, Sephiroth held up a fire and released the strongest spell it contained. The rippling explosion emerged with twice the fury he'd expected, and the little orb blasted to pieces in his hand -- the force should have ripped his arm off but didn't, instead shredding his glove and burying little crystalline shards into his palm. Almost blindly he reached out and grabbed Cloud by the arm among the melee, dragging him closer even as he began thrashing and twitching – and fighting against the sudden explosion of pain in his own head, almost strong enough to bowl him over.

Zack came rolling after Cloud, emerging from underneath a pile of Shinra MPs who were either dead, dying of burn or sword wounds, or unconscious, and Sephiroth thrust Cloud back in Zack's direction before taking off, trusting the other to follow. They'd thinned the ranks enough to slip through again, breaking out into a dead sprint across the wastelands while about half the original number of troopers followed or knelt in place and futilely wasted ammunition. They were halfway down the cliffs, partway to the valley that contained their destination. Streaming up from every nook and crevice, more Shinra troopers awaited them, and Sephiroth realized they had to take a gamble.

"Sephiroth, we're not--"

"--We're SOLDIERs," Sephiroth replied, and Zack cringed, but didn't hesitate -- instead sprinting until he was even with Sephiroth, and taking the flying leap right as he did, right over the face of a cliff.

Sephiroth almost felt absurd, sometimes, for having so much faith in a body that was Hojo's creation -- but somehow, when they hit the ground a good five stories later, he guessed, not even a limb snapped out of place. Zack went rolling as he landed, Cloud with him, but managed to stumble to his feet a second later and grab Cloud in the same sudden motion. Sephiroth sprang to his feet and felt his wounds from the fall heal before the blood even dried and continued to run, unaffected. The Shinra troopers hadn't expected them to do something so stupidly daring -- perhaps because _they_ had no idea what a SOLDIER first-class could really do -- and lined the cliff tops, shooting at them. It was much too late for them to catch up, but it wasn't over. A single helicopter swooped down from above, aiming a beam at them, pilot shouting something indiscernible over a loudspeaker.

"Sorry, can't hear you! We'll have to talk to ya later!" Zack shouted, sheathing his sword and raising a hand to wave, then flipping them off with a grin. Sephiroth lifted another materia he'd stolen from the MP and released a spell. Predictably, it exploded, this time driving shards so far into his hand they stuck out the other side -- but lightning reamed the chopper's engine and sent it on a wobbling death spiral to the ground.

Whatever rush of adrenaline that kept Zack from succumbing to the aftereffects of mako addiction seemed to waver, suddenly, and he stumbled – barely managing to keep on his feet. The second time, he really did fall down. In the heat of the moment Sephiroth offered him a hand without thinking, helping the other man up, and then taking off again. They were leaving the troopers far, far behind. Zack's breath came a little raggedly. Sephiroth didn't feel winded at all, even when the adrenaline wore away. Even for him, that didn't seem quite right -- but then, he wasn't sure low-level materia had ever actually exploded before in his hands, even when he'd been in training.

Something was different.

(I'd think you'd want to limit my abilities. Isn't this dangerous?)

He couldn't see them -- but he could sense them in his head, practically sneering at him. _"Restrict your power, and you'd be useless. So long as we have control over you, it doesn't matter."_

Sephiroth scoffed, and Zack glanced at him, but seemed too distracted with the effort of keeping on his feet to bother asking about it. The bodies of SOLDIERs -- and those who were a little more than SOLDIERs -- were basically glorified automatons, designed to keep running and running and running beyond the point when regular human bodies broke apart completely. Even in Zack's state, he managed to keep a steady clip behind Sephiroth until they finally came to the one of the slum gates. Two posted guards, oblivious to the cliff top battle but probably not unaware of the helicopter crash, rose their guns as soon as they saw Sephiroth, Zack, and Cloud.

"Halt right there!"

Sephiroth slew the first man with a thrust, and hewed the other man down in the blink of an eye. Zack, stumbling to a stop, let out a sigh. "You probably could have just knocked them out, you know."

"It doesn't matter. We'll disappear into the slums."

"Yeah, but... ah, who the hell am I kidding," Zack muttered, bitterly. "Just more blood on the hands. It's stupid to even worry about it at this point, I'll just drive myself nuts."

The two of them shoved the heavy gate open and slid right into Midgar's Sector Five Slums.

Sephiroth had been here only a handful of times, mostly for missions. The slums were more the domain of the Turks than they were SOLDIER, but monsters and militants popped up with some frequency, and if they made enough of a mess, it became SOLDIER's job to do the clean-up duty. The cluttered mess of shoddily constructed houses, some built on material as flimsy as cardboard, and the piles of trash and debris littering the dirty streets and alleyways were the same as ever. The people of the slums, helpless to avoid it, were as dirty as the city around them, though as he and Zack slipped through the messy streets and amidst the narrow alleys and passages leading from one area to another, the townsfolk glared, not about to let two men with Mako eyes and one unconscious man through their midst without suspicion.

Still, the majority of people on the streets ignored them or looked the other way, and a few seemed to positively shrink away as Sephiroth and Zack passed. Down here, they weren't entirely out-of-place, but Sephiroth knew he and Zack were both nearly covered in dirt, dried blood, and who knew what else.

Zack seemed to have found a second burst of energy, and now jogged a few feet ahead of Sephiroth, leading the way and looking around. "...There are way fewer people here than I remember."

Sephiroth looked around, and sure enough, Zack had a point -- even without knowing much about the Sector 5 slums, he could see that many of the structures and dwellings they passed looked abandoned. Another bit of information caught his eye -- AVALANCHE posters everywhere, littering the streets and tacked onto walls. Finally, there was another oddity -- in order to keep the peace, Shinra usually kept operatives and troopers in every sector, but even in plainclothes, they were all simply spotted by the trained eye. Sephiroth saw no sign of anyone Shinra, and wondered.

"...Anyway, Aerith would be at the church, this time of day... it's just ahead..." Zack still panted a bit, but kept on with grim resolution written all over his face. A cathedral loomed above them, as old and dilapidated as the rest of Sector Five, but sitting in something rare -- a beam of light, coming down through one of the cracks in the plate. It seemed oddly ethereal, even if it was obvious the days of worship at this church were probably decades gone by the wayside. Zack, with Cloud on his shoulder, stumped up the steps and kicked open the doors, before running in with a shout.

"AERITH! I'M HERE!"

For some reason, Sephiroth hesitated before entering -- but as soon as he did, he saw Zack run past the pews to the front of the cathedral and then stop, so suddenly the force nearly sent Cloud flying from his shoulder. Sephiroth strode up the center aisle and paused, too. Zack stood staring at a patch of dead, decaying flowers, looking absolutely appalled.

"...She wouldn't let these die like this," Zack finally said, flatly, his voice echoing around the empty church -- no one here except the three of them. Sephiroth spent a moment listening to the Cetra -- they were murmuring again, and their voices seemed to be in discord -- before taking a step closer to the flowers.

"They died recently. Probably within the last few weeks."

"...Yeah... I guess..." Zack muttered. "...Does this mean...? Does this mean Aerith was taken again, or... or maybe she's out somewhere in the slums. But... she wouldn't--" After _everything_, this seemed to be close to breaking Zack -- and Sephiroth turned to him almost on impulse. The other set Cloud down on one of the pews, then knelt in front of the dead flower patch, wiping sweat from his forehead. "...Maybe... Hojo captured her again, or... shit, I dunno. But she wouldn't let these flowers die... _ever_."

"...Maybe she left Midgar on her own."

"No, that's not likely... where would she go? She was raised in this hell hole. I think she'd come to think it wasn't all bad... Unless... no, she was probably the only person who knew about these flowers here. If she had planned to go somewhere, she would have asked one of the stupid kids around to take care of them. They were important to her. I wonder... if Hojo, or the Turks, or... someone. SHIT!"

Zack slammed his fist against his thigh with a heavy smack, gritting his teeth -- before sighing and getting to his feet, wearily, silent and almost uncharacteristically moody looking. After a moment, though, he seemed to push whatever apprehensions he was feeling back inside, and looked at Sephiroth with a slight smile. "...You really don't look like you're going to backstab me now. Especially since you came all the way here, even after saying you'd just ditch us at the gate."

Sephiroth arched an eyebrow slightly, then shook his head. There really was no getting out of _this _one. "I suppose I'm just interested in seeing how this turns out."

"Oh, c'mon." To his surprise, Zack thrust out his hand. "Thanks for sticking with us, man. Without your help, Cloud and I would be dead for certain."

Sephiroth almost refused the handshake -- then thought better of it, though Zack cringed as soon as their palms touched, and drew his hand back after a quick shake.

"Wow, your hand hurts to shake. You might want to get those materia shards out of there... that's a real interesting technique, you know, blowing materia up while using it."

"...I don't know why it happened."

"Huh." Zack looked at him for a moment, bemused, before slowly turning to face the church doors, now looking contemplative again. "...Those guys in plainclothes. The first group that attacked us... They were the people from Kalm, don't you think?"

"Yes."

"...Definitely Hojo's work, or at least someone from the science department using his techniques. Ineptly. They were like... quick-grow SOLDIERs, or something."

Sephiroth nodded, considering it all the while and realizing that Hojo must have found some newer, quicker way of breeding passable armies almost over night. Judging by the newspapers scattered around Kalm, the little town had been fully populated just days before -- but now he had little doubt that all of them were gone.

Those that had survived whatever atrocity that had claimed the town were probably now dead in the cliffs above Midgar, and there was no telling how many had died in the process of being converted into some kind of mindless, fighting monster. They'd been strong and fast, too -- nothing like a real SOLDIER, but nothing regular, either. Deep down, Sephiroth felt it once more -- the Cetra's mingled rage and exhilaration. Pleased that humans were dying -- but disgusted that Mako was the culprit.

Zack sighed, breaking Sephiroth out of his thoughts. "Okay. I've got a plan. We've got to go to Elmyra's place -- she's Aerith's foster mother. If Aerith's still around... she'll know. I've only been there once, and she sure as hell didn't approve of Aerith having a thing with me, lemme tell you. But she'll tell me something, I know. She cares about Aerith, too..." Zack looked at Cloud, then turned to Sephiroth. "...Then again, if she sees all of us like this, she might not even open the door."

On a whim, Sephiroth spoke up. "You can go, so long as you're not gone long. I'll stay here and keep watch."

Zack's eyes widened a bit -- before he smiled, clearly trusting Sephiroth without a second-thought. "...Got it. I'll be back in a few!" With a burst of energy seemingly from nowhere, Zack sprinted down the center aisle and out the church door -- leaving Sephiroth leaning against a pew, keeping some distance between him and Cloud.

Strife hadn't played much of a part in any of this. He sat upright, but his eyes were still empty glaring blue, and he twitched on occasion, oblivious to the world around him.

Sephiroth looked at him for a moment, studying the man. He wasn't that impressive now, just small, dirty, wild-haired, and almost motionless. He didn't look much like the glimpses from Sephiroth's memory – glaring blue eyes, a field of stars, a gleaming white sword, blood flying all over the place, a sword-technique that Sephiroth had never dreamed anyone else could have ever attempted -- but then, he didn't know how much he could trust his memories, anymore. Inside of him, the Cetra rumbled suddenly. Sephiroth blinked, seeing a brief glimmer of green Lifestream, before realizing with a sudden tenseness that they were preparing to strike again.

_"Cloud Strife is the one who put an end to your madness. At the height of it, he struck you down like you were nothing... Shouldn't you detest him for it? Don't you hate him?"_

Sephiroth looked down at Cloud, and mentally shrugged at the Cetra. (Right now he's too pathetic to hate.)

_"You're as arrogant as always."_

(...Are you trying to goad me into something? You don't want _him_ killed, do you? Is that why you've let me come all this way? Don't you owe him quite a bit?)

_"We owe Cloud Strife _nothing_."_

The ringing finality in that pronouncement surprised Sephiroth, but before he could respond, Cloud made another soft half-gurgle half-murmur, his limbs beginning to twitch. Again, Sephiroth studied the other man. It seemed like his reward for saving everything the first time was to suffer all of the same agonies as he had before -- failing to become a SOLDIER, failing at being an experiment, and if the Cetra willed it, he'd probably fail to protect Zack and Aerith, too.

Sephiroth sat, watched, and waited for some kind of resentment towards Cloud to surface, but it didn't. All he felt was distant pity mixed with maybe just a little bitterness, too faint a feeling to even act upon. Cloud twitched. Sephiroth watched, beginning to dredge up another memory -- and then drawing nothing but a fog. The Cetra had destroyed something else.

After a while, Sephiroth glanced back towards the church doors, wondering when Zack was going to come back, before walking over to stand above the flowers, watching and almost imagining he could feel their decay. Finally, he glanced back at Cloud out of the corner of his eye, froze, and whirled around -- his hand flashing to his sword hilt and tightening around it.

Cloud Strife sat up, now, looking right _at_ him with startlingly lucid, clear blue eyes set in a completely blank face. Those eyes were as inscrutable as a wall, yet somehow cutting right through Sephiroth. His hand tightened on his sword, an absurdly pointless action. Cloud was small, still pale as a sheet, and he'd been unconscious for weeks, incapable of posing any kind of real threat… and still unnerving, somehow. Sephiroth remained standing, staring, saying nothing. Neither of them moved for what felt like eons, before finally, Cloud -- looking him straight in the eyes -- opened his mouth to speak.

"...I remember."

Sephiroth stared at him. Suddenly, Cloud bent over, clutching both sides of his head in pain and gritting his teeth, a posture Sephiroth couldn't help but recognize. A moment later something reached up and grabbed Sephiroth -- a tendril of pure green Lifestream, twisting out of the ground and wrapping around his arm. Sephiroth jerked, but more tendrils shot up and surrounded him until he no longer saw the church, the slums, Cloud, or any of it. When he slammed to the ground and choked, though, he recognized his surroundings – nothingness, once more.

Above him stood the shadowy figure of the single Cetra. Sephiroth was back in captivity -- back, somewhere in the Lifestream, or maybe trapped outside the Lifestream, on some barren plane of existence where those too damned to simply fade into the planet met their final demise. Sephiroth tried to struggle to his feet, and failed -- he was chained down again.

"...You're very interesting to watch," The Cetra remarked.

"...Just what do you have planned for Cloud?" Sephiroth muttered, finally, after glaring at the Cetra in silence for a long time. "Going to use him for something, too, right?"

"…That's not your concern." Somehow, the Cetra melded into Zack's image, then shifted towards Cloud again, before finally settling on another new figure – not the president, but his son, Rufus, one person who couldn't have been further from Sephiroth's mind. He wondered if the Cetra's appearance wasn't _just_ reacting to his thoughts, but there was no time to ponder. Like he was handing down a verdict, the Cetra took a step closer, speaking in an echoing, discordant voice.

"For now, you're not of use to us. When you are needed again, you will be summoned."

For the first time since the beginning of this nonsense, the Cetra vanished, leaving Sephiroth unable to move, confined in the darkness somewhere. He struggled against the strands of Lifestream holding him into place, but it was futile – and the feeling of utter helplessness that descended upon him was almost worse than all the rest of his punishment, he decided. Sephiroth closed his eyes, and resigned to waiting, trying to do what he could to hold onto something like sanity.

**Author's Notes**

1. Next week: More of Sephiroth's time traveling adventures! The not-so-great-ninja Yuffie! And plot progression!

2. All kinds of feedback are welcome. No, not just welcomed – highly, highly appreciated. And thanks to everyone who's left reviews for previous chapters, you guys are awesome.


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter Seven**

Sephiroth blearily opened his eyes, and peered through nothingness at what appeared to be shadows moving on a wall, their outlines wavering as if cast by a flickering flame. That meant there was a light source somewhere -- but with the strands of Lifestream wrapped tightly around his body and confining him into place, he didn't even have the ability to turn his head around. Closing his eyes was better than watching nonsensical shadows. He certainly couldn't sleep like this, but he had always been very good at losing himself in his own mind. Anyone acquainted with Hojo had to be, actually.

But there were limits to how well he could try to distance himself, and after just a short while, he began thinking about his own situation. It wasn't pleasant. Confronting reality had never really been his strong suit -- it was better to just dismiss what details didn't fit with his own world view and never analyze them, lest things start crumbling around him. Living in that kind of self-delusion had precipitated his eventual fall, because looking back -- with the benefit of hindsight, and something that was probably sanity -- he realized he'd been suppressing the little hints that things weren't quite right all of his life, and when finally faced with the whole picture, his mind had shattered.

It was odd, thinking back to the fragmented memories of Nibelheim -- his Nibelheim, in his world that no longer existed -- and realizing the secrets he'd stumbled across there had really been very obvious and very ugly realities that he'd somehow been able to dismiss before. And yet while what he'd found in the reactor and the mansion had broken apart his own fragile reality, what he knew about the Cetra now had broken things apart again. He knew he wasn't an ancient, and since he'd already ruled out being human, he supposed it was back to being some kind of monster. Even that conclusion had a few holes in it, more so now that he had a clearer picture than anyone on the planet as to what the Cetra really were. Jenova might not have been an ancient -- might not have been anything, really, which meant he, too, was something out of nothing -- but a little inkling in the back of his mind told him that the Cetra had only succumbed to her not because Jenova had any really specific or special abilities, but because they had all gone completely and terminally insane long before Jenova had ever landed on the surface of the Planet.

The existence of Holy and Meteor did nothing but confirm it. Both were materia, which meant at some point, the Cetra had actually felt there was a need for ultimate destructive magic. He wondered if perhaps they'd all once been like the upper echelons of Shinra inc. were now, determined to find their Promised Land, and somehow convinced that the way to do it was to stockpile more and more weapons and power and leave sanity and restraint by the wayside, all the while. Jenova hadn't been their downfall. She'd been the final nail in the coffin at the end of it. That was the only way any of this made sense.

The more he thought about it, the more it sickened him.

The flickering shadows on the distant wall coalesced, and suddenly Sephiroth watched as the single Cetra approached, its form blurring and shifting in the darkness until finally shortening and widening into a perfect doppelganger of President Shinra. Sephiroth gave him one look, and scowled distastefully.

"It's time for you to assist us again."

"...Assist you? Sometimes I think it's more like you're just assisting me. What's your role in all of this? What are you even doing, other than placing me somewhere on the surface of the Planet and giving me vague, asinine orders that I'm better off not following?" Sephiroth usually spent so much time thinking about his words before he spoke that he often didn't bother speaking at all, but this all came out rather suddenly. He waited for his punishment, but surprisingly, nothing came.

"It's understandable that you would feel such impatience," The Cetra replied, all sweetness and light, and suddenly Sephiroth decided he wanted nothing to do with whatever was coming next. Impassively, and none-too-subtly, he changed the subject.

"What do you want me to do this time?"

Too late. The Cetra cocked its head a little, almost inquisitively. "It seems like you're already forgetting your sentence, though. Impatience isn't going to help things much. It'll only make this situation more painful, for both of us."

"For both of us? Please."

"Your next task," the Cetra broke in, suddenly, surprising him, "is to fire the silver bullet. Wars start when complacency is shattered. Sometimes it takes a considerable effort to rouse humans to fight. Other times, a mere spark will catch flame and set everything ablaze. They're quite interesting, aren't they?"

Sephiroth said nothing.

"You will go to Wutai under the guise of Shinra, act as a SOLDIER – it shouldn't be hard -- and kill a girl," The Cetra said, its shape molding into someone only vaguely familiar. Sephiroth frowned a little.

"You're trying to rouse Godo Kisaragi into attacking Shinra."

"Yes."

"Another Wutain War, then? Why would that make a difference? Wutai barely has the strength to fight. Neither does Shinra, actually. It would be a slow war of attrition for both sides. I thought you were looking for something a little more sudden?"

"There are other factors at play... and there's little time for you to waste. Go now."

Sephiroth felt the familiar rushing sensation, and hit the ground a moment later, rolling in sandy loam before getting back to his feet, curious to as what the Cetra had in store for him. No punishment seemed forthcoming -- today, they were unusually patient. Perhaps, in some way, their strength was fading -- he could only hope, but then his better instincts took over, and he waited for the trap to spring.

He recognized the Wutain shores, even if it had been a long time since he'd been here. This was somewhere southwest of the capital, but only by a few miles. The air felt hot and humid -- still late summer here, in this hemisphere, and he guessed that very little real time had gone by. The hottest days of summer in Midgar and Wutai's hottest days usually coincided, meaning that Zack and Cloud -- whatever had happened to them -- were probably still there, maybe looking for Aerith.

They weren't really important to think about, though, almost distractions. Sephiroth heard a rustle in the bushes and he knew he'd been seen, definitely by a Wutain scout -- but to think that the Wutains still bothered with scouting, when the war had been lost years ago and Shinra had disarmed the country entirely was odd, anachronistic. Sephiroth drew his sword, slowly, then crouched low as ten Wutain Ninja flew out of the surrounding bushes, each wearing the distinctive clan insignia that had been outlawed after Shinra's conquest.

(...I see,) he told the Cetra, right before drawing his sword. The hot summer days didn't change, but the year was now different -- they were further back in time again, during the first war. It seemed like the Cetra thought Shinra's efforts in Wutai back then had been far too _merciful_.

Wutain ninja were fast and strong, but Sephiroth took the first two down in a single stroke and awaited the rest in a battle stance, impassive and preparing to strike defensively, almost bored. Aside from being strong fighters and hellishly hard to find in the immense forests around Wutai's capital city, the Wutain fighters weren't any more than a nuisance.

_"I think you a need a reminder,"_ The Cetra hissed in his ear, suddenly, taking him off-guard. _"Whatever latitude we give you can be taken away in an instant."_

In retrospect, maybe it shouldn't have been a surprise. As the Wutain ninja charged him a flash of pain so intense it completely blinded him bowled Sephiroth over, sending him stumbling and clutching his head at an inopportune moment. A second later a shuriken sank into his shoulder and unfurled, shredding bone and muscle in a way that the Planet couldn't. Sephiroth slew the owner of the shuriken effortlessly, but another blast of pain -- warm regards from the Cetra -- send him to his knees, fighting blurring vision and yet somehow managing to catch a blade with his hand before it sank into his head and driving his sword into the blade's owner. Two arrows sank into his legs -- they were trying to hamstring him now, keep him from moving, and most likely capture him -- but Sephiroth felt a sudden, hot flash of rage.

Cetra be damned. They weren't going to interfere with what he did best.

Striking fast as a bolt of summer lightning, Sephiroth sprang towards the oncoming Ninja and killed two more, before sending a blast of low-level ice magic into the trees (careful not to let the materia blow up on him again), aiming well enough to send two Wutains falling to the ground like overripe fruit. He killed them before they could get to their feet, then sprang towards the last man. Rather than attempt to run, the single remaining scout drew a katana and took a fighting stance -- then suddenly charged, screaming some kind of curse in the Wutain language and leaving himself wide open.

Sephiroth knew the move. Towards the end of the war, the Wutain Ninja realized that theirs was a lost cause, and somehow found death greatly preferable to living under Shinra's tutelage. He gave the man what he wanted, then flicked the body off the end of his sword with disdain -- before scowling and ripping the arrows out of his legs, watching blood fly and then irritably pressuring his shoulder wound, crouching in the forest and waiting for the mako and Jenova cells to do their work. It didn't take long.

"I think you're the one who needs a reminder." Sephiroth told the Cetra, uncaringly, talking aloud to his surroundings. "Was that supposed to be a punishment? You were no more of a hindrance than they were," he said, aiming his gaze at the dead Wutain Ninja -- and the Cetra seethed, quietly, but this time it was with a kind of subdued patience he was unaccustomed to feeling from then. Gone was the unquenched rage, the sudden mood-swings, the unbridled sadism -- maybe they were weakening, somehow.

No. Sephiroth took a few steps into the night time forest and let a wan, bitter little smile spread across his face, more self-mocking than it was a taunt. Their rage, the intense highs and lows of anger and exhilaration brought on by the slightest provocation, came from a much deeper source -- panic, laced with fear, far more toxic than anger ever was. Their planet was dying. But now _something _was changing. The Cetra were more single-minded now, focused, confident -- and infinitely worse.

He took another step, and then the Cetra tossed his body like he was nothing. Sephiroth slammed into a rock surface with a hard crunch, but that was somehow secondary to whatever else they were doing -- the cells that made up every part of his body were so mako-saturated they were hardly recognizably human anymore, and that mako was the very essence of the Cetra's control over him. It was their Lifestream, inside of him. They could do whatever they wanted with it.

Sephiroth saw green again, and bent over. Each mako-saturated cell started sizzling away inside, like acid racing through each of his veins and eating its way through his body. It grew more and more intense, hotter and hotter, until finally ripping his insides out to douse them in ice suddenly started sounding like a rational action. He couldn't even _move_.

All the years in Hojo's lab, he'd come to think of mako as a deep, aching chill. When he was injected with it or doused in it he shivered, and after every dosage he came away feeling cold for days, even after stepping into his shower and turning the faucet until the water grew hot enough to scald a normal person's skin -- and even that hadn't helped much back when he'd been a child. He'd still trembled afterwards, as it raced through him and became part of his body.

This was hot, fiery wrath at its worst, inescapable, inside and outside all at once. If he were even capable of conscious thought he would have begged for it to stop in an instant -- pride and arrogance be damned -- but that wasn't possible. There was no escape. His entire body felt like it was roasting on the surface of the sun, and each second ticking by felt longer than any amount of time his mind could even comprehend. Lifetimes. Hundreds of lifetimes. They'd given him just a taste of this before, but now it was the full onslaught, a living burning-death. Their coup-de-grace.

Then the acidic green in his vision started to fade, slowly, and after a while, he realized the torture must have stopped. Sephiroth's eyes refocused on the trees around him from where he lied flat on his stomach and looking sideways, unseeingly.

_"You should understand things a little more clearly, now. Time no longer passes in your world. Things do not change. The movement of people and places doesn't matter. Nothing matters, outside of what we tell you. You are _ours_. Every cell in your body belongs to us."_

Even if he barely counted as conscious, Sephiroth heard them. The words sounded jumbled, though, and it took a long time to make sense of them. The next command came out more sharply, a little clearer than the rest -- another blow, another stab of pain. It was so miniscule compared to the receding fire that he didn't even twitch.

_"Now go finish the job."_

Sephiroth remained on the ground for a long time -- too long, really -- before slowly getting to his feet. As soon as he was up his throat started burning. He grabbed at it, started coughing again, covered his mouth, and then studied the mako on his hand. It wasn't the first time for this. It was the first time that the mako inside of him came out burning hot instead of cold, and Sephiroth wiped his hand off on a nearby tree trunk and watched it sizzle at the bark before lifting his sword again, silently, and slipping through the night time forests.

The nearer he got to the capital, the thicker the smell of smoke became -- Da Chao was burning. It was the end of the war, and end of Shinra's conquest -- in Sephiroth's world the Wutain War had been inevitable as it was meaningless, fought only because Shinra wanted to take the entire Wutain continent and turn its pristine natural resources into materia mines and factories, and put three new reactors just offshore, in Wutain waters. The outcome had been all but inevitable, too. The Wutains didn't have materia, didn't have SOLDIERs, didn't have any kind of aerial forces -- seemingly helpless, but even with Sephiroth leading the march on Wutain shores, Shinra had still lost hundreds of its own in a bloody two year conflict that stood as a testament to Wutai's tenacity.

In the end, though, Da Chao had burned. Somehow, even without Sephiroth, things were playing out the same -- though as soon as he came in sight of the capital city, overrun by Shinra troops and the last seeds of Wutain resistance he ceased pondering it. So soon after the Cetra's punishment, the sight of fire overwhelmed his senses just a little. He grabbed his forehead for a moment, then shook it off and made for the tallest building, Lord Godo's palace.

Making his way through the capital unseen wasn't difficult. Sephiroth kept to the shadows, evaded both Wutain Ninja and SOLDIERs, and put a sword through anyone who happened to catch a glimpse of him. In the carnage of falling ashes and towering flames, a few more dead men hardly made a dent. The only place not touched by the carnage seemed to be the royal palace, but Sephiroth noticed only a few guards, leftovers, clearly aware that it was only a matter of time before Shinra's forces focused their attentions on breaking through to the Emperor. Sephiroth didn't bother killing them, instead climbing a tree and vaulting over the palace wall.

Subterfuge -- all this sneaking about and entering unseen -- wasn't really his preferred method of staging an attack, even if he could be good at it. That was more Turk work than SOLDIER -- SOLDIERs didn't need to be subtle, and Sephiroth wasn't used to making an effort at not being seen. All his life, he'd drawn eyes wherever he went -- that was very obviously Hojo's intent, and maybe Professor Gast's, too. They'd wanted someone who belonged on posters and pedestals -- and Sephiroth found it odd, suddenly, to think that he could walk into any given small town on the continent and _not_ be faced with dozens of newspapers emblazoned with pictures of his face and embellished descriptions of his latest "heroic" deeds -- which often amounted to little more than butchery.

Sephiroth started climbing the tower, towards where Lord Godo surely awaited his hour of judgment. Midway there, as he entered what appeared to be a large martial arts training room, someone finally leapt in to impede his way. It seemed like most of the palace guard had been dismissed, but somehow, Lord Godo's daughter remained.

The girl, no more than nine or ten years old, gave him one look and pulled out a shuriken several sizes too big for her, scowling. "SOLDIER! Stop right there!" Her shout came out shrill -- just a little girl, after all -- but she didn't look aware enough to be scared, not yet. "I'm the Great Ninja, Yuffie Kisaragi! And I'm not letting you go any further! Draw your sword!"

This was a game to her, clearly. Sephiroth only had the dimmest memories of the rest of Godo Kisaragi's family -- his wife had died in one of the earlier attacks, and he had a daughter -- but something else about the girl's face beckoned to him, called out from beyond the haze over most of his memories of the times _after_ Nibelheim. He supposed this girl was one of the nine who had put a stop to his plans, eventually. Looking at the girl now, she wasn't much. For some reason, it was almost a little insulting. She squinted at him, craning her head, then shifted into some kind of rudimentary fighting stance.

"Well, if you're not going to say anything, I'm going to attack now," The girl announced, obviously lacking any knowledge of how fighting actually worked. "Say your prayers! And start looking terrified!"

She ran at him. He disarmed her with a careful, almost lazy flick of the Masamune, then grabbed her by the arm and twisted her around before she could even shriek. "Sorry. We're going to see your father."

"Huh? LET ME GO! Get off me! Hey, _ASSHOLE!_ I SAID I'M A GREAT NINJA! You don't want me using my ninjitsu to break loose, SOLDIER!"

Sephiroth knew what the Cetra had in mind. Godo Kisaragi was a wise and measured ruler, one who had chosen to bow his head rather than see his entire country ruined. But Sephiroth remembered how fiercely Godo had warned them to not put a hand on his daughter, that if anything ever happened to her, Shinra would slowly bleed out all of its resources trying to put down a Wutain insurgency. It was mostly an empty boast, but the Cetra remembered, too.

Slamming through the door to Godo's chambers, he tossed the Great Ninja Yuffie -- a nine-year old girl -- onto the ground in front of her father and put a boot on her to keep her from moving. The girl squeaked, but somehow possessed enough common sense to fall silent, while Godo stared in horror for a long couple of minutes, the color leaving his face completely. He looked from his only daughter, to Sephiroth -- who stood poised to kill her -- and the life seemed to fade from his eyes.

"So you'll even take the lives of children, just to prove a point. I've already given you my country. Must you take my daughter, as well?" No protests, nothing but tired defeat. Godo Kisaragi's deadened eyes didn't have an ounce of fight left in them, just tired resignation to the horror of his surroundings. "I beg you. Take my life, not hers. If you must make an example to the Wutain people, make it be me."

The man was altogether too calm, too defeated. He knew he was beaten. Seeing the man's obvious exhaustion, Sephiroth frowned. "You're not even going to struggle? You fought for your country, but you won't fight for the life of your daughter?"

"Unleash her, SOLDIER, and I'll fight you to the death. But what can I do...? I've never seen your face, certainly. You might not be one of the top-ranking SOLDIERs, so maybe your reflexes won't be as inhumanly fast as the rest, and I could overpower you. But if I moved, you'd kill her. What am I to do, but beg for the mercy of a man I don't even know?"

Underneath his boot, the girl twisted, trying futilely to struggle loose, and Sephiroth knew immediately that the Cetra were wrong again. Killing Godo Kisaragi's daughter in front of him would only go one way -- Sephiroth would lower his sword, and as soon as her head rolled, Godo would attack him and die fighting.

(...You really have no clue how people work.) He thought, as the Cetra rumbled in disapproval.

_"It's true, we are not humans. But neither are you."_

(I'm human enough to tell you that killing this girl won't spark a fire. It'll just douse it. I don't even know what you're trying to do here.)

For the first time, a sort of grim awe overcame the Cetra, tinged with some sort of sardonic amusement. Even now, after they'd definitively asserted complete power over every cell in his body, Sephiroth saw no reason to simply sit back and do as he was ordered without question. They saw it, and knew he was right -- grudgingly.

_"...Then act as you see fit."_

He smirked just a little -- and kicked Yuffie aside, none-too-gently yet not with enough force to seriously hurt her. As soon as she was out of range Godo attacked, drawing a katana from his side and moving with precise, surprising speed for a man who had seemed so broken before. Sephiroth met the man's blade with his own and parried blow after blow, unsurprised to see that Godo's moves were flawless. Ruler of Wutai, and no slouch -- Sephiroth hadn't ever actually came to blows with him in _his_ Wutai, but Godo had killed lesser SOLDIERs, even with a normal body un-enhanced by Mako and only Hojo knew what else. Doubtlessly, the Wutains were fierce fighters. If they'd been willing to put aside their own principles -- use materia, create SOLDIERS of their own -- they might have even won.

But then, they'd probably never even considered the possibility. It was a shame. Sephiroth struck, taking Godo off-guard suddenly and twisting his blade aside. In a split second, resignation crossed the man's face again -- he knew he'd lost -- then his expression faded entirely as Sephiroth slew him in one quick, clean thrust.

Yuffie sat in the corner, staring. Certain her eyes were fixed on both of them, Sephiroth tossed the body off the end of the blade, with as much scorn as he could manage, and turned to her, thinking how easy it was the play this role. "President Shinra sends his regards, girl."

Her eyes rose from her father's body to his face, wide as saucers, glassy. For a moment, Sephiroth -- and the Cetra -- thought he'd misjudged, that the girl was going to turn out to be as defeated as her father. Then he saw it -- a flicker of complete, utter hatred, and felt a little hint of satisfaction. Yuffie sprinted at him, suddenly, with a tiny kunai in hand. Sephiroth just stood watching, impassive, and almost laughed -- he wondered if the weapon, tiny as it was, could manage to kill him. Maybe with enough stabs, maybe if the girl was willing to cut him to pieces -- and if that happened, perhaps the Cetra's entire plan would be derailed, because of one scrawny nine-year old.

It seemed they weren't going to take the chance, no matter how slim it was. Sephiroth saw a flash of green and then felt them actually exert enough force to shove him backwards, and the girl tripped and fell. As soon as she did, green exploded in Sephiroth's field of vision. Again, he started to fall.

The landing came much more abruptly then he expected, knocking his breath out in a sudden rush. Underneath, soft soggy ground soaked through to the bone, and even if it smelled fetid, like mako sludge, the coolness of the mud was a relief -- his insides still burned.

Sephiroth lingered for a moment, before lifting his head. Around him, the outline of several small houses loomed out of the darkness, part of some unrecognizable little town. Then he squinted, taking note of the vegetation, the towering mako reactor in the distance, and the sound of bullfrogs. This was somewhere on the Western Continent, probably the south, one of those little villages in the jungles.

_...Gongaga._

Yes -- the name of Zack's hometown. Unbidden, another memory came up from nowhere, some offhand little conversation in the Shinra headquarters, a few months after the end of the war.

_"So, Sephiroth," _Zack's voice, in his head. The image associated with it was one of the other man leaning over the edge of Sephiroth's desk, getting in the way of whatever mundane task he was trying to do -- and Zack was probably _trying _to be annoying. _"You never told me where you're from. Actually, I never told you where I'm from, did I? Ever been to Gongaga?"_

_"No."_

_"Small town on the West continent, way down south. Right in the middle of the jungles and swamps. There are about ninety people in the entire village, year-round. We never get any tourists. Most of the homes didn't even have power until they built the reactor... Hey, are you listening?"_

_"...I'm busy."_

_"Yeah, well, this paperwork's not going anywhere. I thought you were supposed to be a hero or something. Why's Mr. Big Hero doing _paperwork_?" _A little tinge of jealousy, there -- but it seemed good-natured. _"Well, I guess I'll leave you alone... tell me about your hometown some time. Hell, tell me SOMETHING about yourself, some time. At least tell me that you don't always take yourself this seriously, that can't be healthy."_

_"...Okay. You can go away now." _

_"Heh, doesn't exactly sound like you're looking for suggestions, huh?"_

And, oddly enough, Zack's behavior never quite annoyed Sephiroth, either. That said something, but whatever the significance was, it vanished a moment later. Sephiroth cringed, grabbed his forehead, and forgot what he was even thinking about as the Cetra wiped another one of his memories completely clean, replacing it with an empty white space that hurt to think about, instead.

He got up, and looked around an unfamiliar little town, finding it completely empty. But the Cetra wanted him here for some reason -- and so he walked towards the nearest building and knelt, picking up a discarded newspaper. The date surprised him, five years after the Nibelheim Incident, and early autumn. Presumably, It was just a few weeks after Cloud and Zack's escape from the lab. But what he saw on the front page didn't surprise him at all, and nor did the Cetra's sudden feeling of preening satisfaction, like it had really been _their _idea.

The front-page article was about a vicious attack on a Western Continent Shinra Fortress by a whole band of Wutain insurgents, led by a Princess. Several casualties, one destroyed mako cannon, probably a good half-billion gil in damage, overall, news accompanied by rumors that the Wutain Princess leading the attack was joining up with AVALANCHE, now, too. AVALANCHE wasn't the small force it had been before, in Sephiroth's memories. It was growing. Resistance against Shinra seemed to be spreading, and it would only get more intense, if Zack joined the fight -- and if Cloud ever woke up. Little steps, little alterations in the flow of time and war and hatred were spreading, to the delight of the Cetra.

"_Small alterations in the flow of time. Tiny ripples spread--" _This time, he tried mentally blocking out their voice. It didn't help much, especially now that his head felt too crowded for his own thoughts.

"Killing Godo, while his daughter watches. That's not exactly a small alteration."

_"But it achieved the intended result. And really, how hard was it for you?"_

"It wasn't." It hadn't been -- if they expected him to feel any remorse, now, after everything, they were more clueless than he could have imagined, and apparently not bothering to look too deeply into his psyche, after all. The odd thing, though, was that the strange hint of relief Sephiroth had felt as soon as he'd seen his body keel over dead at the age of seven was fading. He was dead, and yet the hatred for him would grow again -- but what did that matter?

He hadn't given Zack much of a reason to hate him. Nibelheim had burned to the ground, but this time, he hadn't been the one to start the fire, just fan the flames. But he could feel the Cetra rumbling in anticipation of something, and Sephiroth gave voice to what he'd known all along.

"It's almost like I've been given a second chance... with Zack, Cloud, and everyone else... but that can't possibly be your intent."

The Cetra, predictably, just laughed at him.

"...It's meaningless, anyway," Sephiroth muttered, his voice coming out hollowly. The empty town around him, abandoned just like Kalm -- and with its people probably made into instant-weaponry, just like Kalm -- didn't stop him from feeling crazy, for standing in some supposed public place and having a conversation with no one visible.

_"You're beginning to gain a very clear understanding of what we're doing here."_

"And you're getting stronger," Sephiroth replied. "I suppose that means more humans are dying."

_"Yes. It's gradual, but with all humans dead, it will be ours again. They will no longer use their materia, their reactors, all the petty little things that have continued to draw strength from this Planet... and us. The humans that die now can't be reborn, and this planet will be saved."_

"...And you'll rule over it again? What makes you any better than humans?" He asked, wearily. "You'll probably destroy it too, just as they're doing."

That didn't incite their anger, but only because his taunts were beginning to mean less and less. Sephiroth clutched his head and fell over, feeling the burning pain rising again -- fire lacing through his veins, his insides aflame, every mako-saturated cell in his body giving in to their control -- as the world seemed to fade around him.

_"This planet's future will be ours, eventually. But you are ours, for eternity."_

Sephiroth choked, and writhed, helplessly, wondering how many lifetimes of torment he'd have to endure this time --

_"The Planet doesn't belong to you. He doesn't, either."_

-- A voice broke in, quiet amidst all the raging exhilaration of the Cetra, but enough to shatter their concentration and give him just a bit of relief. For a moment, Sephiroth could hear and feel nothing -- except perhaps confusion over the origin of that single voice, emanating from the Cetra. The pain receded, just a bit, and he listened to them chatter amongst themselves suddenly, disconcerted.

_...Who?_

Then the onslaught of rage came. The Cetra were confused now, maybe even a little shaken -- and blaming it on the one person they had control over, making him writhe and suffer until that single voice was all but forgotten.

**notes: **

1. ...It's going to be a while before anyone saves the day.

2. Next week: Back to Zack and Cloud, and the first of three _very_ long chapters.

3. Thanks for the reviews, everyone! Please keep 'em coming, let me know what you think.


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter Eight**

Morning dew misted the grass around them, and seeing it lifted Zack's spirits just a little.

"Autumn's coming on, huh, Cloud?"

Behind him, a few feet away, Cloud lifted his head, then muttered a quiet response, barely audible even in the silence of the morning. "Yeah..."

"Cool weather sure makes traveling easier, anyway. How ya feeling this morning?" Zack got up, stretched. Cloud looked over his shoulder again, almost a little shyly, before nodding and turning back to... whatever it was that he was doing. Just looking out along the stream next to them, so far as Zack could tell, looking without seeming to see it and saying nothing.

Cloud did a lot of that these days, but it was still a relief -- anything was better than before, when Cloud had done nothing but make little gurgling noises and stare unseeingly all around him.

Now his eyes were alert and over-bright with mako, but just as much of a wall. He was almost as quiet, too, and Zack made every effort to hide the fact that it was just a little _frustrating_, knowing that Cloud wasn't saying anything at all to him, really. It wasn't because he was angry with Cloud for it -- Cloud's silence worried the hell out of him. The kid just didn't seem all there at all.

Zack walked around a few paces, working the sleepiness out of his muscles, barely able to hold still. The effects of mako withdrawal were long past, leaving him feeling exhilarated, alive, really capable of taking on anything he came across. And now that Cloud was awake Zack may as well have been on top of the world, but for one thing -- Aerith. This morning, that didn't dampen his mood. They were going to find her, Shinra be damned. Zack didn't care how many people he had to blow up or rip into to do so, especially if they were Shinra.

Freedom was sweet. There was no Hojo, and there were no lab techs, no painful mako injections, no watching Cloud get hauled off-kicking-and-screaming or maybe just dead to the world, no hours spent in living cold agony, suspended in mako, motionless, little more than a living corpse. And the air out here was fresh, early autumn winds swept it up from the sea and down from the mountains and cleaned away the otherwise perpetual mako stench. They were somewhere on the road, now far from Midgar. Shinra had lost track of them, or maybe just forgotten -- so far as Zack saw it, the Company had bigger fish to fry than a missing ex-SOLDIER and a former trooper.

Too bad for them, he thought, and grinned before turning to Cloud again, practically jumping up and down with excitement. "Well, you ready to move, Cloud? I think we can make the fort today, huh? It's not much longer."

Cloud turned to him, and lifted his eyes for just a second -- before averting them and looking off, distant as always. "Yeah... it isn't much further."

Something in Cloud's voice seemed a little off, and Zack paused, cocking his head and looking at the other, curiously. "You ever been to Fort Condor, Cloud?"

"Mmmm... no." Cloud murmured, with some hesitation, before getting to his feet. This time, a wan smile appeared on his face -- plainly forced, because if Zack could discern one thing about Cloud's bright mako-blue eyes it was that he didn't feel like smiling at all. "Guess we'd better go."

Just a trace of that back-country accent in his voice, but Cloud almost always sounded a little raw these days. Zack gave him a quick grin before turning away and trying not to sigh, knowing Cloud might have misinterpreted it. There were about a million reasons for Cloud Strife to be acting a just a little strange. Being tortured for five years in Hojo's lab was probably the big one, but Cloud had also lost his home town, too, and who knows how many people important to him had gone down in that blaze. Zack had almost joined all those people, and he figured Cloud, too, must have been captured at some point -- though he'd hoped all the while that the kid had managed to find some way of getting out. There'd been no reason why he shouldn't have.

Zack's terrible suspicion was that Cloud had just chosen to stay by his side after he'd fallen, instead, even risking being captured by Shinra. They'd already gone against the company at that point, and as far as Zack knew, Cloud didn't see much else worth living for in his life except the SOLDIER try-outs he'd already failed. And it hurt to think, all the while, how strangely eager Cloud had been to go back to his hometown, even if it meant going against the company -- Zack had always thought that eagerness seemed tinged with some kind of weird fatalism, too, a sort of grim do-or-die-determination that hadn't seemed appropriate back then, like Cloud knew that they were going into an inferno.

But that was all craziness. Zack looked back at Cloud briefly, as the other placed some things back in his traveling bag, and smiled -- a different sort of smile, now that he knew Cloud wasn't looking, one that was probably entirely tainted by guilt. He'd been flippant the entire time about going to Nibelheim and rescuing Aerith, laughing and telling Cloud it was going to be a breeze. Now that was a little painful to think about, so as soon as Cloud looked back up at him, he pushed it aside.

"Almost smells like rain in the air, huh?" Zack remarked. Cloud looked up, before shrugging impassively.

"I guess."

Zack turned back towards the road, feeling like an idiot. There were a million things he could be saying to Cloud right now -- questions, apologies, promises, jokes -- and here he was making a dumb-assed weather observation apparent for anyone with eyes to see. Above, clouds were getting puffy and dark and the blue in the sky was graying over -- it did wonderful things for the temperatures, though. Zack liked a nice, cool, rainy day.

The two of them started walking, traveling at a fairly steady clip. Cloud had no trouble at all keeping up, and didn't seem to mind Zack cracking jokes and pointing things out as they traveled along the road, now coming towards a river crossing and the woodlands beyond. Cloud always responded with either a forced laugh or a wan little smile, obviously trying hard to pretend to be happy -- for Zack's sake, and Zack felt like an asshole for being in such high spirits while it seemed like something was eating away at Cloud.

And like most people Zack knew, Cloud wasn't going to tell him about it. Unlike most people, though, Zack didn't want to pry Cloud unless it seemed like an emergency -- and maybe it was -- but it just seemed better to let it come out on its own time. He was trying to help Cloud, somehow, but Zack got the feeling that just by being awake, alive, and aware again, Cloud was helping his high spirits more than anything.

Hell, he'd made a total scene, even tripped over one of the pews when he came stumbling back into the church and saw Cloud sitting up and looking bewildered, staring around his surroundings like he'd seen a ghost. Zack had been so elated he'd picked up the kid and whirled Cloud around like a bride -- and for a brief moment, Cloud's bewilderment had given away to actual laughter, real, genuine elation -- Cloud didn't hate him, he'd known, and for that, Zack felt like the entire universe was on his side. But then he'd noticed the third member of their little traveling party was gone, and when Zack had asked Cloud about it, the other had shut down almost immediately -- and since then, Cloud had been a wall.

"He just left," Cloud had muttered. "...I don't know where he went."

"Did he say anything to you?" Zack asked, but Cloud just shrugged and shook his head, all nonchalance, and it was either genuine or an act so good it was basically performance art.

That was fine, though Zack had... strangely mixed emotions about it. He'd just wanted to talk to the stoic asshole a little more, maybe, thank him again or something -- it seemed so sudden, going through all of that nonsense and then just vanishing.

It was obvious that the other man had some kind of agenda. He'd very plainly been goading Zack against Shinra, but it didn't seem weird or manipulative or anything -- something about the other man had made it very clear that he hated the Company and wanted it gone, too. He'd also been funny, troubled by something, and emotionally receptive as a rock, roughly, but freaking _interesting_. But it had been two weeks since then, and there hadn't been a sign of Sephiroth.

Zack's visit with Elmyra had been mostly fruitless. Aerith's foster mother was worried sick, no longer even caring that Zack was a SOLDIER -- bad news -- and telling him everything she knew, that Aerith had gone to the church one day and never returned, and no one had seen a thing. It had to be Shinra -- it was always Shinra. But with no traces this time, not a single clue anywhere, and no chance of storming into Shinra HQ and forcing it out of anyone without being littered with bullets, Zack knew there'd been no choice but to keep moving.

But then there was Cloud. For some reason he'd just spent the next few days as they lied low in the slums looking around like it was a foreign country, or like he was seeing ghosts everywhere. They'd gone to wall market asking around, and for some reason Cloud had muttered something about meeting a friend over in Sector 7, at some bar. No luck there -- Cloud had taken one step inside, then balked. Zack thought maybe he just wanted a drink, something hard, and he didn't blame the kid even if he knew alcohol didn't have much affect on anyone as mako-saturated as they were -- but Cloud had looked at the bartender, some old guy in his fifties with an eye patch, frowned, and then turned and left right away, muttering to Zack that his friend hadn't been there after all.

Ever since, Cloud hadn't said much. On the third day they'd slipped out of Midgar, this time taking the Mountain Road past Junon and towards Fort Condor. There wasn't a lot they could do, really, but the fort seemed like a starting place. The world around them had turned into a powder keg in a fortnight. It was hard to know what went on, but apparently, some Wutain Princess was leading an army through the other continent, and hundreds of thousands of rebels were gathering at Fort Condor under an AVALANCHE banner, with more rumors that AVALANCHE and the Wutain insurgents were finally doing what they should have done years ago -- teaming up, and gearing for a fight.

Zack was smart enough to know the rumors were massive exaggerations. Shinra's manpower seemed oddly scattered, but a few hundred miles and a few days were enough to turn a story about a rogue attack by Wutains into a full-scale assault, and rumors always added a bit to numbers. Still, common sense told him that Fort Condor was the way to go -- so long as whoever was there didn't see Cloud and Zack's eyes from afar and gun them down before they even set foot inside. It would take some convincing, but Zack liked to think he was good at it. Whatever was happening in the world, he wanted to be where the action was.

Cloud didn't say much, but he seemed to agree. That weird, grimly determined look flashed over his face again as soon as Zack told him about the attacks by the Wutains and the gathering rebels, and Zack guessed the kid hated Shinra as much as anyone, and would have no qualms fighting them. But then, while they'd stood somewhere in the slums, leaning against an old broken down truck, Cloud had said something else odd -- looked at Zack and flatly intoned, "We've got to find Aerith, too."

The words weren't so odd. Zack agreed -- they'd look for Aerith, try to dig up hints everywhere they went until they found her. Shinra could take someone without a trace, but they weren't good at hiding people. But the way Cloud's words came out, with a strangely personal vehemence -- it was almost like Cloud knew her, to be honest.

It wasn't impossible, Zack supposed. Just very improbable -- but Cloud acted strange all the while, putting up an impenetrable wall around himself and now forcing smiles on his face, trying to hide something. Cloud hadn't been like that before. He'd once been shy and quiet, soft-spoken and naive, a country-boy at heart -- but totally guileless, not the kind you'd suspect of anything. That was different now.

And maybe it was just Hojo. Undoubtedly, Cloud was physically different. Zack saw the muscles, almost sensed Cloud's strength, and knew Hojo had made him into a SOLDIER like he'd always dreamed, and probably something much, much worse. But again, Cloud seemed somehow raw and broken to pieces, just one painful, forced smile away from breaking completely. The more Zack thought about it, the more he hated Hojo -- the one responsible for all of this. Whenever they captured him -- not _if_, but _when _-- Zack figured there was going to be some very nasty fisticuffs over who got to finally rip him to pieces. And if Cloud wanted to do it, well, Zack probably wasn't going to stop him.

But that hearkened back to something Cloud had muttered on his first waking night -- Zack had made the mistake and started talking about Hojo then stopped, wondering if just somehow mentioning the scientist's name would send Cloud off and away again. Cloud had averted his face, though, and quietly murmured something that chilled Zack to the bone.

"I'm almost grateful..."

Whatever the hell that meant. Zack decided, for now, he was not going to think about it. It was getting hard again.

Cloud hadn't been very interested in hearing the story of their great escape, though, whether it was about Nibelheim or Sephiroth or any of the rest -- maybe because it was embarrassing. Or maybe, again, he was _acting_. Zack let all the thoughts jumble around in his head for a while, as they made their way across a rickety old bridge and then down a forest path, and finally let out an exasperated sigh.

"...Zack?" Cloud's genuine concern hurt a little, so Zack turned and deflected it with a smirk.

"It's nothing. Just... all this stuff about a Wutain Princess, and AVALANCHE... I hope it's not just some trap. I mean, it sounds convincing, but with Shinra controlling all the news and papers, who really knows?"

"...I bet it's true." Cloud said. "...Um... did you ever meet the princess? I mean, in Wutai?" Cloud managed to sound entirely awkward, enough to make Zack laugh -- and then feel like an asshole again, since Cloud really hadn't had a chance to leave those weird, awkward teenage years. Being suspended in a test-tube of mako and experimented on wasn't really the best way for a shy adolescent to pick up social skills.

"Princess? No, no way. But... well, there was a Princess in Wutai. Just the Emperor's daughter. I think he just had one kid."

"...What happened to the Emperor?"

"Killed. Some SOLDIER did it, I guess. And it was a fuck-headed stupid thing to do, too, considering we all had orders not to touch Wutai's nobility, or any of its leaders. But... people get crazy in a war," Zack muttered. "I've seen it first hand."

"Hmmm."

"...Hell, anyone from Wutai has about a million reasons to want everyone in Shinra dead." Zack said. "I gotta be honest with you, I sort of want to meet this Princess. I don't think she's in Condor, but... well... I've never actually met a Princess. I didn't know they existed, actually. So... I'm looking forward to it."

Cloud looked at him and arched an eyebrow, slowly and almost imperceptibly, and the sight of it made Zack burst out laughing, before reaching out and ruffling Cloud's hair, annoying him a little. "Hey, come on, man, don't give me that look. I'm not trying to be _pervy _or something--"

Cloud scoffed loudly, and Zack grinned -- not wanting to attach some kind of meaning to everything, but still glad to see a bit of edginess coming out of Cloud again, any sign that he could still scoff and roll his eyes at inane, silly little things. After a moment, though, he grew sullen and quiet again.

"...I don't know if they'll have the strength alone to take on Shinra..."

That sounded like an odd thing for Cloud to say, but there was also a lot of truth to it. Zack nodded.

"Yeah. You're probably right. But hey... just think how much stronger they'll be with _us _on their side."

For some reason, that made Cloud avert his eyes -- and Zack inwardly cursed, mad only at himself. He was being an arrogant asshole again, forgetting that Cloud was only a SOLDIER because Hojo had chosen to make him into one -- and maybe, just maybe, Cloud didn't like thinking about what he was now. Then again...

_He almost feels grateful._ Zack fought to keep from shuddering and turned back to Cloud, a little more soberly.

"Seriously, though, you're right, Cloud. They might not. But... s'far as I could tell, Shinra's not in great shape, either."

Cloud lifted his head. "You think so?"

"No Shinra guards down in the slums -- you saw that, right? And no one's after us anymore, though that might just be because they realized they bit off more than they can chew, when Sephiroth and I took about a hundred of 'em down back a few weeks ago--" Zack paused, considering it, then decided he had to ask. "Cloud... you know, while you were, um... sick..."

"Yeah?"

"...Seems like you'd always freak out whenever Sephiroth came near. You know, like I said, he was another SOLDIER, and..."

"Hojo's son."

"Right." Zack must have mentioned that off-hand at some point -- he'd blabbered on to Cloud for about an hour in the church, afterwards, so elated his friend was awake that his mouth had just started running, uncontrollably. "It was... weird. So, you... you didn't, um, know him beforehand or anything--"

"...I've never met anyone like that." Cloud shrugged, nonchalant again.

"Oh... either way, it seems like Shinra's fallen to pieces over the years. Too many reactor accidents, too many things have happened... people used to trust them, thinking the reactors would make their lives easier, and that it was okay, you know, to be sucking out Mako without really knowing what it was."

"...We all believed it."

Zack smiled, sourly. "I did, too. But... well, five years is a long time, and I think... things are--"

Whatever he'd been about to say left his mind immediately, interrupted by the crashing of something enormous through the woods around them. A second later a full-sized ruby dragon appeared, bursting through the foliage and letting out a guttural roar as soon as it saw them. Zack immediately stepped between the beast and Cloud, drawing the Buster Sword and preparing --

-- Cloud _flicked _him aside, just casually shoving Zack and sending him toppling, confused, right on his ass. The other didn't give him too long to be puzzled. The dragon, some two-thousand pounds of muscle, teeth, and fire, came thundering towards them, but little more than a flash of some kind of materia spell, black clothes, and yellow hair and suddenly the dragon's skull split open and it toppled, soundlessly, hitting the ground without seeming to realize it was dead and twitching for a few moments. It was all over so fast Zack could just barely make sense of it.

Regular SOLDIER first classes were capable of a lot of things, but such an efficient dismantling of one of the most vicious monsters out there was a stretch even for the firsts. But it didn't seem like a big deal at all for Cloud, a kid who had never even made the cut. Still pale and weary-looking from his ordeal, Cloud, not even breathing heavily -- or even perturbed at all -- gave the materia orb in his hand a flick, cautiously tossing it back to Zack and averting his eyes.

"...Sorry, Zack, I didn't really... I didn't really think. Sorry."

Zack just stared, clueless to as what Cloud was even apologizing for. After a moment, he managed to piece a few things together, looking stupidly at the materia orb and realizing it had been attached to his sword, just a moment before. So, Cloud had managed to take his Lightning without Zack even noticing, kill a dragon in the blink of an eye with little more than a low-level spell and his bare _hands_, and now he looked the same as ever, while the dragon had no _head_. The pieces were somewhere around them.

"...Cloud, what was...?"

"I'm sorry."

Zack rubbed his forehead for a moment, thinking maybe he was getting slower -- then lifting his head and getting back to his feet. "Not a big deal. Just..."

"We should keep moving. That... these shouldn't be around here," Cloud finally said, now feigning nonchalance and looking awkward all the while as he waved a hand towards the dragon. Zack blinked, deciding that he didn't particularly like being taken off-guard all the time. A second later, it occurred to him that Cloud was right: big ruby dragons, the kind usually only found wandering about on the North Continent up near the crater, were a thousand miles out of place here, in the valleys just outside Fort Condor.

And how Cloud knew that -- well, there was no telling what Hojo's experimentation had drilled into him. Maybe it was instinctive.

"You're right, that is... strange. Yeah, let's keep moving," Zack finally concluded, not really wanting to think about it any further. They continued walking and Zack glanced at the dragon with a frown. He could have taken it out, too -- certainly -- but only because he'd fought them before, knew their weaknesses, knew how they moved, knew how they thought. He wasn't so sure about Cloud. Trying very carefully not to let uncertainty or any kind of shock permeate his voice, Zack finally muttered, "That was something."

"...It's all Hojo's work," Cloud admitted, altogether too freely. "Like I said before... I'm almost grateful." There it was -- that raw edge again. Zack cocked his head, then shook it, not even really knowing what to say but trying, all the same.

"Yeah. Well, good thing you moved. Let those things get ahead of you and you're in for a long fight. Now, I could have taken it--"

"...I know... of course... but..." Something odd passed over Cloud's face, and Zack felt almost disorientated, for a moment. Yes, that little flash of something was _protectiveness_. Things were getting weird, Zack realized, but instead of letting that show, he smiled.

"Heh, just returning the favor, huh?"

"I couldn't ever repay you."

Wrong thing to say, Zack knew. "You're right. That's cause you don't owe me _anything_. I just did what friends do, you know. That sort of thing. Don't make me get all cheesy." He saw Cloud's look and walked up, slapping a hand to his shoulder. "Hey, don't let it bug you. I'll look out for you, too."

Cloud paused, looking Zack with those overly bright blue eyes again, before finally giving a short, sharp nod. That was all the affirmation Zack needed, and he grinned, feeling his spirits lifting again. Hell, now wasn't the time to be getting mushy, to think about how glad he was just to see that Cloud was up and alive and he _remembered_ -- and maybe he was acting a little weird in more ways than one, and in ways he'd never acted before -- but then, Hojo. Fucking Hojo.

It all came back to Hojo, but it didn't have to, necessarily. Maybe it was just that the potential had lurked in Cloud all along, and no one had seen it. Thousands of recruits came parading into Midgar per year, especially back during the height of things, right after the Wutain War, when news of the "heroism" of Shinra's SOLDIERs spread all over the world. It wasn't easy to separate out the good ones from those who'd never had a chance, and mistakes were made --

-- Cloud had been pathetic. Barely even fourteen the first time he'd set foot on the training grounds with the other recruits, maybe all of five feet on his toes and perhaps a hundred pounds, okay with some of the distance running and stamina drills, but completely lacking the raw physical strength, sometimes clumsy, and not really fast enough. That had all changed, obviously.

Zack just didn't want to think much about it.

**

* * *

**

"Almost there!" Zack announced right around midday, and Fort Condor sat right before them, just a few miles away. Sure enough, a new flag -- not Shinra, not AVALANCHE, and not Wutai's -- flew above the fort itself, which was little more than a single building on top of a barren hill, overlooking a little valley below. A little town sat a few miles from the base, formally inhabited entirely by Shinra. Zack imagined that was different now. As they rose up on the hill and moved towards the fort, he spotted a few more flags -- plainly not Shinra -- flying over the town. Most were the new flag, probably chosen by the rebels here, but he spotted a few AVALANCHE, and a few more Wutain. A show of solidarity, he imagined. He and Cloud passed through the narrow crevasse towards the fort entrance, and were greeted with three rifles aimed right at their faces. Cloud tensed. Zack remained calm, not bothering to reach for his sword as one of the guards barked an order at them.

"Shinra. Turn back right now. I don't know what you're thinking, just walking up here like this. Go before I call out our troops." One of the men behind the rifles spat out, angrily.

"Hey, hey," Zack rose his hands, trying to be the voice of reason. "Chill out. We're not Shinra, not anymore. We're here to--"

"--Do you think we're stupid enough to let two SOLDIERs in here? Why is he still wearing the uniform?" The man asked, moving his eyes towards Cloud. Zack sighed. That had been their one point of contention -- Zack had gently suggested Cloud don some street clothes, but for some reason, he clung to that SOLDIER uniform with such a complete stubbornness that Zack knew any argument of his was going to be dismissed. Zack, for his part, just wore a plain shirt and some camouflage pants. Nothing incriminating. Nothing out of place. But there was also nothing to hide their eyes.

"He, uh... It's a camouflage thing, I think. Seriously, though, we're not Shinra. We heard what's happening here, and we want too--"

"Leave, or you're getting a bullet right between your eyes."

Cloud took a step forwards, tense, and Zack almost worried that he was going to get violently protective again -- but suddenly someone else came from behind them, two sets of approaching footsteps. Zack didn't turn -- not with a gun still pointing in his face -- but one of the two shouted, a girl's voice.

_"...Cloud?!"_

Cloud practically whirled around, eyes briefly widening big as plates -- before relaxing almost immediately, though he still looked surprised.

"...Tifa?"

Now Zack had to turn around, and the men guarding the fort entrance lowered their guns, too, obviously recognizing these two newcomers, though they were just as confused as Zack was. Now a girl was actually running towards them from below, surprise written all over her face, dark hair flying out behind her. Definitely a pretty girl, too, and practically elated to see Cloud -- the lucky dog -- though Cloud seemed shocked into silence. To Zack's surprise, she came right up and threw her arms around his shoulders.

"Cloud! You're... you're still alive... I didn't think--"

"Tifa… I'm surprised you're here…" Cloud just sounded confused and kind of worried, Zack thought.

Tifa had drawn out of the hug, but stood staring at Cloud in total shock, her big brown eyes beginning to well up with a few tears. Zack strained his brain for a moment, vaguely remembering Cloud having mentioned a Tifa before, in some long ago conversation. Cloud stared right back at her, then averted his eyes a little.

"...it's been a long time."

"...It's been seven years," She practically whispered. "Cloud... Nibelheim, it--"

"Burned to the ground. I know. I was there."

"...You were there?" That obviously struck her pretty hard, but Cloud seemed ready to change the subject.

"Tifa, this place is..." Cloud trailed off, then shook his head. "Are you here to fight, too...?"

The second person approaching came at just a walk, a tall, broad black man. He gave Zack and Cloud one look and snorted.

"--The hell? What are Shinra doing here?"

Behind, one of the guards scowled. "I don't know. They just walked up. Tifa, Barrett, you know 'em?"

"I don't have a damn clue who they are," Barrett said, looking at Zack and sizing him up, while Zack did the same, a little bemused. Tifa, though, snapped back to reality suddenly, turning from Cloud and looking between Barrett and the guard.

"I know who he is. This is Cloud Strife. He was a friend of mine from Nibelheim, back when we were kids."

"Nibelheim. Oh, you mean--" The guard began, but Barrett cut him off, suspicion still written all over his face.

"--What about you?" Barrett looked at Zack, but to his surprise, it was Cloud who spoke.

"That's Zack. He's my friend..."

Zack took a step up to Cloud, thrusting out his hand to Tifa. "Hey, Tifa, right? Nice to meet you. Cloud's like the little brother I never had, you know." Cloud gave him a double-take, obviously much more shocked by that then he should have been. Tifa took his hand with a little more hesitation, looking at him like she was vaguely trying to piece some kind of memory together, before nodding.

"Tifa Lockhart. I guess if you're with Cloud, I can trust you."

"They're SOLDIERS," Barrett pointed out, his arms folded. One of them wasn't really a normal arm -- incredibly enough, it looked like a gun. Zack boggled a little at that while trying not to, instead doing his level best not to start any kind of confrontation.

"Yeah, we were with Shinra, but--"

"--Cloud," Tifa still seemed completely shocked by Cloud's appearance. "Your eyes are... does that mean you did it? You really joined SOLDIER?"

It took Cloud a few seconds too long to answer. "Yeah. I did."

Zack tried not to blink at that, but then he saw Cloud lower his eyes and understood. Of course. When you left your small, broken-down little mountain town to join SOLDIER, everyone usually got wind of it, from your childhood friends to your worst enemies, the bullies at school, the asshole teachers, the town mayor, everyone. Maybe Cloud's town was gone now, but there was no bigger embarrassment than going back and having to admit that you'd completely failed. Cloud wasn't a SOLDIER, had never held the rank -- but after Hojo, maybe it didn't matter so much, Zack thought, his mind going back to that damn dragon again. And something told him that maybe, just maybe, one of the people Cloud had been trying to impress the most now stood right in front of him. No matter what you thought of Shinra, making SOLDIER was still some kind of feat.

Zack decided now was the time to break in, while Cloud looked at the ground and Tifa was caught somewhere between elation and bewilderment, probably catching onto it even quicker than Zack -- Cloud was acting a little weird again, somewhere between embarrassed and uncomfortable. Maybe it was just regular old awkwardness around a pretty girl, Zack didn't know.

"Cloud and I were both SOLDIERs, first class," Zack said, and now it was Cloud's turn to stare at him. "Keep in mind, I said _were_. We're just two guys, now, who happen to hate Shinra and everything it stands for. And it seems to me that the people here are very, very interested in crushing Shinra. So, if you want two strong fighters, here we are. You don't even have to let us in, if you don't wanna. We'll go camp out, or hang out in town, whatever. Just know, if you want someone to fight by your side until Shinra's broken, we're ready."

Tifa spent a moment longer looking at Cloud in amazement, before her face became hard again. Zack guessed right away that these two -- the man called Barrett, and Tifa, Cloud's childhood friend -- were probably among the little rebellion's leaders, though they didn't seem too military.

"...He's your childhood friend, then?" Barrett looked towards Tifa, then back at Cloud and Zack. "Fuck, you're still Shinra. We don't have any reason to trust you."

"But we need as many fighters as we can get, and I doubt there's more than a few stronger than they are," Tifa said, simply.

"They're also the enemy. But, shit. It ain't up to me. You wanna let 'im in, fine, but I ain't trustin' 'em."

"Fair enough," Zack said. "Clap us in chains or something. Just let us out when the fighting starts."

"...That's not really up to us," The guard muttered, "The Princess--"

"She's a whole 'nother continent away," The other guard said. "Er, Tifa--"

"They can come in with me. I'll vouch for them. I'll keep an eye on them, too, but there's no need. I know Cloud."

A bit more hesitation revealed that there wasn't any obvious chain of command here -- no officers, no one really in charge. The three guards wore uniforms but Tifa and Barrett didn't, and on closer inspection, one of them was Wutain, staring at Zack with an expression of very pointed hatred. He knew that look. He'd been recognized, but he was silently glad the Wutain decided not to say anything. Barrett was already giving him dirty, distrustful glares -- which he met, eye for eye -- and he didn't want things to get any stickier than they already were. Finally, though, the guard who'd spoken shrugged and stepped aside.

Barrett scoffed. "Just know that if ya try anything funny, you're goin' down."

"You'd have every right to shoot us both," Zack replied, trying to hold his temper, play mediator in this situation. "But you don't have to, because we're not gonna do anything funny."

"It'll be fine, Barrett," Tifa said, with complete certainty, before leading him and Cloud inside -- through a narrow dirt pathway, and up a tiny ladder, into the main entry hall of Fort Condor.

Zack had been here once before, in the Shinra days, and it was little different now -- a serious of caves and corridors carved right into the rock and dirt, dark, musty, and not really the most pleasant place to house troops. But the smell of mako that had once permeated the entire place was gone, replaced by a heavy and healthy earthiness, mingled rock and soil. They wound through the main room, earning more than a few suspicious looks from the other rebels sitting about. Most, Zack saw, were wearing Shinra uniforms dyed a mild green color, but they still glared at Cloud, especially, for no real reason at all. Zack just followed. Eventually they wound into a side-corridor, circling around a narrow hall before coming into a musty candle-lit room with a few beds and some desks covered in maps, what looked like a mix between an infirmary and a headquarters of sorts. Dual-purposed rooms weren't that surprising. Fort Condor wasn't exactly big.

"So, is this HQ?" Zack asked, and Tifa nodded.

"This is AVALANCHE's headquarters."

"You're a member of AVALANCHE, then?" Zack asked, surprised. Cloud, though, just looked impassive. "So they're really here? And the Princess is--"

"--Everyone who hates Shinra is gathering here, like you said," Tifa told him, with a nod. "Barrett's AVALANCHE's leader, and I'm his second, basically. There are a few more of us here, and lots more in town. The Fort Condor Rebels are their own group, but they've agreed to work with us. And some of insurgents from Wutai are here, too, helping us man the fort. To hold this place, we need every fighter we can get."

Cloud said nothing, still strangely silent. Zack frowned a little.

"What are your numbers like?"

"Three-hundred fifty, maybe. We haven't gotten a full count yet--"

"--That's it? Not enough for a rebellion, not even close." Zack said, almost without thinking. "You're gonna need hundreds or thousands more. Even with a fort like this, with pretty good defenses, you won't be able to hold without more warm bodies. Who's in charge?"

"We -- we really don't have a leader. The Wutain Princess is across the ocean, but she's going to come here... until then, we're all separate..."

"That's not good. You're gonna need chains of command, someone to give out orders, that kind of thing. Hopefully you won't need it soon. You think you're up to giving orders, once Shinra marches? What about Barrett?"

Tifa's eyes narrowed. He could tell that while she trusted Cloud, unconditionally, she was yet to instill the same kind of trust in Zack, not before hearing more from him. And this probably wasn't the right foot to start out on, but Zack had to admit one thing -- if he was going to be part of a rebellion against Shinra, he wanted it to succeed.

"I... I don't really know. Barrett and I have never really done anything on a large scale. We've bombed a few Shinra targets, that's all. And the Fort Condor people were living peacefully here, until they took the fort."

"How'd they do that?"

"Mostly luck," Tifa admitted. "About three weeks ago, most of the Shinra troops here left, probably two-hundred of them. The townspeople made their move then... and most that remained were just new recruits. Some of them actually switched sides..."

"Figures," Zack shrugged. "A victory like that'll make 'em overconfident, though. But it's nothing like a real battle. What about this Princess? Is she on the way?"

"Yes. And I think she'd make the best leader, but we've heard she's young... she's won some surprising victories, though," Tifa admitted, now sounding uncomfortable. "...But it doesn't seem like Shinra's going to make a move. Not yet."

"Maybe not," Zack replied, "But you've gotta be prepared."

"Then... will you two help us?" Tifa was so earnest it was almost painful, looking at Cloud more than anyone else. She really cared for him, Zack saw. It was plain to anyone looking except Cloud, who just sat, staring off into the distance with a strange expression on his face. Zack, surprised that Cloud seemed so totally unresponsive to Tifa, instead drew her attention to him.

"Of course. We'll definitely help out as much as we can. Right, Cloud?"

"Yeah..."

"I don't know if you want a SOLDIER so heavily involved in what you're doin', though. I saw the looks we were getting, so... we might ease our way in, try to get the feel of things... I don't know if I'm really a take-charge sort of guy, but..."

"To be honest... we might seem stupid for trusting SOLDIERs, but even Barrett sees that we need someone who knows how to fight if we're ever going to go anywhere. If we actually have to command troops, we'll all probably be in over our heads."

_You guys already are,_ Zack thought, grimly, but he didn't say it, knowing it would only make the wrong impression. "Like I said, we'll do what we can."

Cloud looked up, suddenly, right at Tifa. For some reason, Zack guessed that he'd only paid cursory attention to the previous conversation -- and again, Zack found Cloud's actions to be a little mystifying. He was missing something essential, here, or maybe Cloud just wasn't telling him everything. It was hard to tell. "Tifa... why'd you join AVALANCHE?"

Cloud asked that in a strange way, like he already knew the answer -- but Tifa seemed to miss the oddness of it and answered in the same earnest manner.

"Because they destroyed Nibelheim, Cloud. Papa, and all the townspeople--"

"--are dead. And fighting Shinra won't bring them back." Cloud replied, entirely too evenly. Zack slowly turned to stare at Cloud, while Tifa's face crinkled in confusion.

"You're here, saying that you're going to fight," Tifa said, a fair assessment. "Why shouldn't I be? I'm aware of the danger. And even if I'm not a commander, I _do_ know how to fight."

"I know. It's just..." Cloud didn't finish, instead letting his voice trail away and then shaking his head, never quite looking at Tifa all the while. "It's nothing."

Again, Tifa looked conflicted, taking note of Cloud's odd behavior. Maybe it meshed with her memories of him, back when he'd just been Cloud, her supposed childhood friend. Zack didn't know, really. Something seemed odd and kind of uncomfortable about the entire situation, and he wasn't sure what.

But then, Cloud seemed willing to lie to impress her -- not a complete lie, maybe, but it was an odd, niggling little detail that seemed at odds with everything else that had passed between the two. Cloud seemed to care for Tifa, certainly, Zack had seen it briefly flash through his eyes -- and there certainly had been many who had joined SOLDIER on auspices as stupid as wanting to impress a girl, a boy, or someone back home -- but that didn't seem like what was going on here at all.

_Man, this is all confusing. _Zack rubbed his temples for a moment, thinking maybe he was overanalyzing everything, seeing shadows where there were none. He just couldn't shake the feeling of unease, about Cloud in particular. It wasn't mistrust at all, Cloud had done nothing to deserve that, but it was more like... worry. Zack didn't like it.

For some reason, Cloud Strife putting on a very complex performance, here. His mind seemed elsewhere.

"Cloud, how did you end up here? You said you were in Nibelheim, but--"

"--I was. We went there to rescue someone."

"...Rescue--?"

"Aerith. My girlfri--" Zack paused, wondering if that was still true. There was a distinct possibility that Aerith had moved on, in the five years he'd been gone, thinking him dead, and that hurt a little even if it might have been a good thing. It would be okay, actually, if he came back and found her married or living with a guy, somewhere out in a villa by the sea -- safe and sound, far from Shinra. Too bad that was completely, ridiculously improbable. "A friend," He muttered, lamely. "She was captured and thrown in that old Shinra mansion, and Cloud and I came to save her. And then..."

And then what? Zack realized, rather numbly, that his intrusion into the town was probably what had led it to ashes, but Tifa shook her head, immediately catching onto what he was thinking and not accepting it for a moment.

"I assumed something like that happened. The Shinra people burned the town down to destroy the evidence of whatever it was. But... what happened to you after Nibelheim...?" She looked towards Cloud again, and Zack remained silent, deciding to let Cloud answer this one, curious again.

"...We were... mercenaries."

Zack's eyebrows rose. Cloud didn't look at either of them, but continued on heedlessly, weaving a tale out of nothing. "We traveled from place to place, doing things... and now we're here. I... I didn't know you were... still alive, but... I thought maybe you were. I just didn't know where to look."

"I was in Midgar for a few years, and with Gangan before that, learning martial arts... I joined AVALANCHE, but...I looked for you the entire time." Tifa still sounded almost painfully earnest, but Cloud just sat there, looking about as emotionally responsive as a rock. It was almost kind of surreal, listening in on the two. Zack was both involved and not really part of it, as Cloud just sat and told strange little lies, piecing together fragments of things into a barely coherent whole. The worst part was that Zack couldn't really tell if Cloud was acting or not, even if he knew he had to be.

"Zack and I were hurt in Nibelheim, but we escaped. We got out before Shinra could do anything to us. We've been wandering the world ever since... looking for Aerith. His friend."

"Girlfriend," Zack corrected, then paused. "Er, I mean... friend. Yeah."

Cloud didn't look at him. Tifa looked at Cloud, though, the depth of feeling and worry in her eyes troubling, like she sensed it too -- something odd about all of this, something odd about Cloud. Zack knew right then and there that it wasn't just him who saw something strange going on here. He looked towards Tifa a moment, catching her gaze. Now there was a question there and a little curiosity, before she turned back to Cloud.

"Well, I'm glad--" Tifa didn't get to finish. Someone slammed open the door and popped in, a chunky looking guy with a red bandanna on his head.

"Biggs?"

"Tifa," his cheeks were flushed, and he was panting. "You're needed, real quick, up in the main commander's room."

"What is it?"

"Something's up, I don't know. They just sent me--"

"Okay, that's fine. I'll be there in a second."

Zack half rose to his feet, but Tifa turned towards both of them, game-face slipping neatly into place.

"Listen..."

"We'll stay here." Zack said, with a slight smile. "If something's up, maybe we shouldn't be parading around."

"...That's right. I'm sorry. But... I'll be back in a few minutes. We might need your help, and I'll try to convince the other leaders to listen. Okay?"

"Right-o," Zack gave a quick salute, and sat down, arms folded, almost eager. Cloud just sat there, and Tifa followed Biggs out of the room. The door swung shut with a loud clip, and as soon as their footsteps receded, Zack turned to Cloud. For a moment, he just looked at the other. Finally, though, Cloud chanced a quick glance up at Zack, his eyes unreadable.

"I don't think Tifa needs to know. Or anyone. I mean--"

"--No, I get that. Best not to spread the word around, that we're two escaped experiments. I totally get it. But..." Zack paused, scratching his chin and considering it. Cloud looked at him, and the kid almost seemed like he was anticipating some kind of dressing down, a lecture, or a beating -- something. Kid, shit, Cloud was twenty-one, but somehow stuck in Zack's mind as a sixteen year old kid who had been mostly robbed of his own adolescence. Cloud wasn't the kid, not really, but thinking about it made Zack feel old.

"But...?" Cloud finally repeated, with a little hesitation.

"...She really likes you."

Cloud looked down. He actually blushed. "Yeah."

"...Don't tell me you didn't notice."

"No, that's not... I mean... I know," Cloud muttered, unconvincingly. "But... I don't want her to get--"

Tifa burst in, so suddenly that Cloud nearly jumped and Zack snapped back in his chair.

"It doesn't matter if you're SOLDIERs. We need you, now," she said, her voice sharp. Zack rose right to his feet and Cloud leapt up, looking immensely relieved that their conversation had been broken into, leaving whatever he'd about to say interrupted and unsaid. Zack could fill in the blanks, probably with something like 'hurt' -- which was sort of stupid, come to think of it, because Tifa was a trained fighter -- or maybe 'involved,' which was weird, made it seem like Cloud was planning something.

Zack didn't like that at all.

But there wasn't much time to think about it. "What's up?"

Tifa's face became grim, a flicker of anxiety flashing through her eyes, and Zack knew what it was even before she spoke.

"Shinra's coming."

**a/n**

1. This week's chapter was a little more slow-paced and character-focused than the last few have been. Next week, though, there's more Zack and Cloud, some gardening, Rufus, the second of three long chapters in a row, and another attempt at writing action.

2. Again, thanks for all of the reviews/comments. Please keep 'em coming, I like knowing what you (the readers) are thinking.


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter Nine**

"So, what's the score? How many are comin'?" Zack asked, taking a step in the room and casually leaning against the wall, arms folded across his chest. One-by-one, the others in the room turned to where he stood, Tifa next to him and Cloud a little behind, head down and with an inscrutable look on his face. The small room near the top of Ft. Condor, just below where the fort's namesake had once slept, had just a few people in it, all with grim faces. Three Wutain ninja with clan insignia sat glaring shurikens at him. Barrett, along with a few more AVALANCHE members, sat around a small table, glaring daggers at him, and a few men in dyed Shinra uniforms sat glaring bullets at him -- he was getting a lot of murderous glares, all because of the glowing eyes and Cloud's very obvious uniform.

"Shinra," Barrett scoffed again, and Tifa folded her arms, gazing coolly around the room.

"You know, it's not like we have a choice--"

"--How do we know they're not just spies? He still wears a Shinra uniform," One of the Wutains remarked, pointing at Cloud, but Zack straightened up and smirked over at the Ft. Condor guys.

"Yeah, so are they. What are you going to do about it? It's just a raggedy old set of clothes, doesn't mean anything."

"You were once one of the most high-ranking dogs," The Wutain continued. "Were you the one who killed our Emperor?"

"No, I wasn't. I never met the Emperor, and I certainly didn't kill him."

"You Shinra are lower than dogs. A dog wouldn't tell such an obvious lie."

One of the Ft. Condor men, a corporal of some sort, broke in rather suddenly. "We don't have time to discuss this. Well over three thousand Shinra are coming this way, SOLDIERs among them. They want to crush the entire rebellion right here, and we don't even have a plan yet."

"Yeah, and other than you guys from Wutai, everyone here's probably been Shinra something-or-another at one point," Zack said, smoothly, even if he felt a jolt of something sudden and panicky as soon as he heard the number. Three-hundred was a very broad estimate of just how many people were here in the fort now. Zack guessed the number was closer to two-hundred, if even that, which put them at about 15-to-1 odds. That was very apparent to everyone in the room, along with another hard truth -- if they messed up here, they were all as good as dead.

Taking advantage of the gravity of the situation, Zack walked right over to the table where the AVALANCHE members sat and put his fists to it, summoning up his most authoritative voice and his best confident grin while everyone else just stared at him with varying levels of suspicion. It was time for him to put on some true performance art and see what it took to win their trust.

"Look, you might not trust me, but I hate Shinra just as well as all the rest. They fucked me over, took my girl and threw her in a lab to experiment on, then gunned me and my friend here down and left us to die in the ruins of a town they'd destroyed. Yeah, I probably deserve it. Especially after what we did to Wutai, your country," He said, looking directly at the Wutains, before moving his eyes over the rest of the room. "Think of this as penitence. Everything that Shinra took from me, I want to take back, ten times over. I'm sure you all feel the same. So let me help you do it. We'll make 'em bleed out their entire empire, but not if we all die here. Any of you ever commanded an army before?"

Silence, and a lot of downcast faces, none willing to grudgingly admit out loud what was already apparent -- certainly, Tifa had told him as much. Zack was again struck by how far-in over their heads they were, but he also saw fires smoldering in every set of eyes in the room. He wasn't about to put a damper on them, either.

"Didn't think so. So, I'll tell you how to defend this fort, right now. How many people do we have?"

"...AVALANCHE has about 50 here in the fort, and a few more in the city," Tifa admitted, after a moment. The corporal, leader of the Ft. Condor rebels mostly by default, spent a moment summing it up, before shaking his head.

"There are maybe 110 of us."

"We have thirty ninja, all trained in combat," The second Wutain in the room, a much younger man than the other ninja, seemed to have less resentment burning in his eyes than the other two. Zack guessed he was too young to have clear memories of the war.

"So, almost two-hundred people. Almost," Zack said, then smirked. "Perfect."

"Perfect? They've got three-thousand--"

"--Shinra might have three-thousand warm bodies, yeah, but more than two-thirds of 'em are probably just regular troopers, maybe even security forces. It's only the other third you've got to worry about, the SOLDIERs, the monsters, and who the hell knows what else they've got with 'em. Listen to this," Zack straightened up, feigning more confidence than he felt, Cloud silent behind him all the while. "We'll let them come to us, then we'll bombard them every step of the way. We've got the high ground, here, a total advantage. Soon as they set foot on the hills below, we'll have about thirty men with rifles, shooting at them from behind the walls, gunning down as many as we can. That'll probably put a stop to most of the troopers and regulars. Then we roll explosives down, maybe blast them a few times with that old mako cannon here. That'll just leave the SOLDIERs and the other freaks with 'em, so all we've got to do is put up a barricade around the fort, keep 'em from chargin' in at once, and then go out and kick their asses."

"Oh?" The eldest of the three Wutain ninja said, obviously growing more skeptical with each passing minute. "And how do we do that? Even if we don't lose a man, two-hundred against just a few SOLDIERs--"

"--It won't be easy. But here's where Cloud and I come in." Zack winked. "Just find some of your best to back us, and we'll take whatever Shinra throws at us and throw it right back at them. I know what most of my fellow SOLDIERs were like. Big, stupid brutes with far fewer brains than muscles."

"So, you sayin' you different from the rest of them dogs, then?" Barrett's suspicion now seemed to have moved over to doubt, though Zack could tell he'd done one thing -- won over the Fort Condor guys, who stood in the room along with their young corporal and were starting to look close to convinced.

"Oh, I dunno if I'm smarter. But there were maybe thirty men, total, who made first Class, out of all the kids who tried. Cloud and I were two of 'em."

"...So where do we play into this?" The younger Wutain still seemed slightly less skeptical than his peers.

"I know how you Wutain guys fight. You like a good melee. Follow Cloud and I."

"No." A flat refusal, unsurprisingly. "We will not follow unproven Shinra dogs into battle."

"Then do your own thing, buddy. Just stay out of our way, and we'll stay out of yours." Zack said, straightening up. "Look, I'm only giving you a bit of advice, not orders. Follow 'em if you want. How much time do we have?"

"Maybe thirty minutes," one of the Ft. Condor guys muttered, quietly, his face a shade of grayish-pale. "If even that... they came up fast."

"Then we'd better get moving now," Tifa spoke next, and even if she'd never commanded an army, she almost sounded like a general. "I say we go with his plan. What else do we have?"

The others in the room -- Barrett, the Wutains, the Fort Condor rebels -- all seemed to come to the same conclusion Tifa did. Whether they liked it or not, there wasn't much time for bickering, and even less time for a dispute over who gave the orders. It wasn't about trust at all. Zack had the feeling AVALANCHE, Wutai, and the others didn't quite trust one another, either, but with time and lives on the line, doubts and misconceptions about one another were best tossed right out the window.

For the first time, though, Cloud stepped in front of Zack, still looking thin, tired, and tense -- but his eyes were what mattered, suddenly burning over-bright with some unidentifiable emotion. As soon as Cloud spoke, though, Zack understood. "We won't fail. They have to be stopped."

The words themselves didn't mean much, and weren't spoken very loudly, either -- but they forced their way out with an undertone of pure, unwavering rage. Somehow, only Barrett had the guts to respond to that, although Zack thought he saw worry flicker across Tifa's face.

"You better not fail, Shinra," Barrett grunted, but then he rose to his feet, a rough, impatient motion. "Ain't none of us gonna be here after this if you do."

"Hey, don't talk like that," Zack said, "It's all a matter of kicking Shinra ass, and Cloud and I know Shinra tactics, fightin' styles, and strategies head and tail. Now, guys, let's get moving!"

He noticed Cloud slip out of the room like a wraith, leaving Tifa to look after him, uncertainly -- but the rest all got to work, putting Zack's plan into action, preparing Fort Condor for battle. Zack decided to leave Cloud at whatever he was doing for the moment and vaulted up the narrow pathway to the main room at the top of the fortress, where they could peer down the hill through a narrow hatch and watch as the Fort Condor rebels worked together with a few techies from AVALANCHE, attempting to rapidly erect barricades and roll Mako cannons into position. Zack watched, assisted when needed, gave out "advice" that may as well have been orders, then took position at the top of the fortress wall, crouched behind a turret. He could see dust in the distance, and hear the sound of engines.

Knowing it was Shinra sparked a kind of savage excitement in him that began building the nearer and nearer the sounds grew, building as the realization dawned upon him – he was about the fight the Shinra, and turn the middle-finger to Hojo, President Shinra, and all of the rest of the bastards who worked there. Zack wanted to think he had other reasons for fighting, but at the end of the day, the raw, personal drive for vengeance kept him crouched at the fort and tensing in anticipation, oblivious to the odds. At a certain point men began taking positions -- again, mostly following 'advice' from Zack -- and everything became eerily silent, that weird anticipation before a battle. They couldn't see the whites of their enemies' eyes yet, at least.

Zack sat on the wall, Buster Sword propped behind him, squinting towards the horizon with keen eyes. After a few minutes, Tifa climbed up and stood next to him, looking uncertain again. After a rather awkward silence, Zack straightened up to his feet to stand beside her, never taking his eyes off the still, silent lands before them the entire time.

"So, you and Cloud knew one another from Nibelheim, huh? Childhood friends?" Zack grinned. "Childhood sweethearts?"

Tifa blushed, actually -- but then she shook her head, somewhat wistfully. "...No... we weren't sweethearts. But... we were friends, I think."

"You think?"

Tifa considered it, then smiled. "At least, I hope he'd think of me as a friend... but I really don't know."

"You weren't that close?"

She didn't seem willing to admit, one way or another -- but Tifa studied Zack for a moment before nodding, just a little. It didn't really seem like a yes, though. "Cloud made me a promise, once... almost out of the blue. He said that if I was ever in trouble, he'd come save me."

"Heh. Really? Sounds like something I'd say, actually..." Zack murmured, before he began thinking about Nibelheim again, and his smile faded. "He's acting kind of strange, isn't he?"

"Yeah..."

"We've been through a lot... so... it'll take a while, I think. I mean, I can't really explain it, but..."

"No. I understand. Meeting him here again is just a little overwhelming… especially after everything that's happened."

"I see." Zack stood silently next to Tifa for a few minutes, before a thought came to him completely out-of-the-blue. "...Hey, Tifa. Back in Nibelheim, did you..." He paused abruptly, thinking that dredging up her memories of Nibelheim might not have been the most proper thing to do, particularly when nerves were already on edge and Shinra on the march. "Um, I mean--"

"It's okay. You can ask about it."

"This is sort of a long shot... but... when it happened, did you meet any SOLDIERs? Other than us? Like, uh… a tall, silver-haired guy with a long katana? Wearing lots of black?"

Something in Tifa's eyes flashed, perhaps a hint of recognition, surfacing slowly – but she shook her head a moment later, shrugging a little. "No, I don't think so… but it was all such a mess, it's hard to say… the details are fuzzy."

"Oh… yeah. I guess they would be…" Zack turned and saw the look on her face and almost considered apologizing for even bringing it up in the first place, but as he did he caught the first sight of a Shinra flag in the corner of his eye. "Forget it. Here they come."

The silence deepened, and everyone waited -- out of sight, ducked behind the walls or the barricades, holding position with bated breath. Now they were visible -- a whole wall of Shinra, marching over the edge of the horizon. Troopers, the occasional SOLDIER, wyverns, guard hounds, the usual Shinra cornucopia of terror making no effort to be anything but supremely confident and self-assured of their own victory. Tifa took a glance at the Shinra, then departed with a quick nod in Zack's direction. He admired her poise, a little -- in fact, everyone here at the Fort impressed him. The sobering sight before them seemed to have tempered the over-confidence of some of the younger rebels, but no one had gone yellow-bellied yet. Zack smiled. That was an encouraging sign.

"They really think they're going to win, huh."

Zack turned, surprised. He hadn't heard Cloud approach, but there he was -- a new sword, a Mythril Blade, strapped to his back and his eyes still burning.

"They do. They always think that. It was the same in Wutai. And really, Shinra doesn't do a lot of losing. No one's ever been able to do that great of a job at standing up to them, you know."

"Hmmm." Cloud watched the Shinra troops approach, crouching next to Zack now and still looking tense. "You think our plan will work?"

"...I gotta admit, Cloud, I'm not the tactical guy. I always let others do strategies, battle plans, that kind of thing. All I'm really good for is fighting. So... dunno if it'll work. It isn't much of a plan, actually. Throw up some barricades, depend on the land to protect us, shoot off the mako cannons..."

"I think it'll work. And you do a lot more than just fighting." Cloud said, and Zack glanced back at him, seeing Cloud looked somewhere between stubborn and admiring.

"Spikes, you're flattering me, man..."

"...You're the one who made SOLDIER. You're second to no one, except maybe..." Cloud's voice trailed off, and whatever he was about to say -- Zack wanted to know, because there was something odd on Cloud's face, now -- ended up being drowned out by a sudden rush of activity. Shinra didn't even bother to deliver an ultimatum or warning.

In a matter of seconds the wyverns and guard hounds were rushing up the hill towards the fortress. Then it was all sound and fury, an exploding mako cannon on the rebel's side, explosives being rolled down the hill, and gunfire, all around. Zack gritted his teeth in impatience and went into a crouch, hand on the hilt of the Buster Sword, watching as SOLDIERs weaved up the hill and troopers backed them, bombarded by spells, explosions, and rifle fire and yet still advancing, thinking maybe strength in numbers was going to get them through.

It was all a rush. One moment Zack stood on the turret, crouched low and chewing on his lip in nervous anticipation, and suddenly Cloud seemed to disappear from his side. Next thing he knew one of the barricades below collapsed, leaving their left flank open -- but the expected invasion, Shinra swarming up the walls and guard hounds leaping all over the place, wyverns crawling in and trying to sink their fangs -- never came.

Something surreal happened next, a feat of utter ridiculousness. Zack leapt down off the wall, blood rushing in his ears and sword scything through a wyvern right before it savaged one of the AVALANCHE guys. Some bold Shinra strategist came up with a stupidly dangerous and yet cunning gambit -- one of the jeeps, heavily armored and full of gunmen and Third-Classes came barreling up the hill, full-speed towards the main barricade, spinning around and about to slam full-force into it --

-- it stopped, inexplicably, force and speed be damned, then a powerful blast flipped it right over. A second later Zack spotted blond spiky hair and a white sword, and the jeep flipped over and went rolling back down the hill, faster and faster until it took out about twice as many Shinra as any of the rebels' cannons, materia, or explosives. A grenade landed next to Zack. He took it and hurled it back, then dropped low and charged right towards the nearest cluster of Shinra fighters, trying to force their way past one of the barricades.

_Good luck. Good luck, morons. I've got a friend who can throw_ cars _at you._

Zack met swords with a SOLDIER, some glowing-eyed bastard who leapt down out of nowhere and tried to take him at a bad angle. Twisting his blade around and disarming him took a second, then the man vanished back into the masses. Swinging his sword around, Zack blasted an oncoming wave with a lightning spell, then ice, throwing around high-levels like they were nothing and clearing a path. The others seemed to follow his lead, flocking to him -- Wutains, Ft. Condor, AVALANCHE -- and listening whenever he shouted something, though most of his words ended up lost in the chaos.

A few guard hounds seemed to almost melt away beneath his sword, then four SOLDIERs hit him at once, then four more, then four _more_ -- piling on him, attacking from all sides. Zack's sword whirled and whistled, batting them away and scything through them like they were nothing, feeling something like an immense rush of adrenaline (probably Mako) now coursing through his entire body.

This was all the usual SOLDIER stuff -- complete carnage, brutal fighting, diving in and out of the line of fire and thrusting his sword in anything enemy that moved, hardly distinguishing between other SOLDIERs, Troopers, Wyverns, and Guard Hounds. There were even a few more of those weird silver-haired bastards, and Zack wondered what little town's citizens had disappeared now. The thought made him hate Shinra even more.

He kept on surprising himself, with how much he could hate them -- Zack had never really hate anyone before Hojo, before Shinra had screwed him and Cloud over. It was sort of strange, this funny sinking feeling deep in his stomach accompanied by a tightening in his chest. He'd never hated anything so viscerally before, and in the rush of battle, he wondered how long he was going to last -- fighting like this, hating like this, practically growling with rage and taking down anything he came across.

Shinra dog or not, the Wutains seemed to follow him back and forth, backing Zack up as he rolled like a juggernaut through the masses nearing the top of the hill, trying to breach Fort Condor. He couldn't tell if time was passing, or if there was any sense to what was happening -- it seemed like they were holding, taking advantage of higher ground and better positioning and somehow keeping Shinra from advancing. His plan, thrown-together as it was, was giving Shinra all kinds of hell.

But while Zack led one army, there was a third army out there, somehow stuffed into the form of one otherwise unassuming former-Shinra trooper from Nibelheim. Cloud fought like a wraith. Zack didn't even see him that often, just got the occasional glimpse of dark clothes and spiky yellow hair. He saw the aftereffects, though -- Shinra fighters falling like dominoes, most barely even aware what took them down, and high-level spells being lobbed effortlessly all over the place, like they were nothing. Zack wasn't a slouch with the spells. He often considered himself a damn force of nature, actually -- but if he was his own personal tornado, Cloud was like a damn hurricane, tearing down everything in his path and spreading the damage out over an almost impossibly wide radius.

_And he threw a jeep. A freaking jeep. _

Maybe some kind of mako-induced craziness was making Zack see things. But in a way, he understood.

They were alike and totally different all at once. Against a tenth as many Shinra soldiers, with about a thirtieth the number of followers, Sephiroth had led Zack and Cloud -- then unconscious -- through even poorer odds just to get to Midgar. But what he'd seen of Sephiroth's fighting style was a little different -- elegant and precise, trained, practiced, very tightly controlled. The silver-haired man had been smart, cerebral in a way most Shinra products weren't, and it showed in the way he resisted battle-lust, instead keeping his head about him at all times.

Cloud made an equally strong impression, just in a different way. There was no control there. He just destroyed, destroyed, destroyed, and destroyed.

A Shinra mako cannon went off and Zack hit the dirt, stumbling for just a moment. The second before he leapt up SOLDIERs descended on all sides, no one he recognized -- but then a flash of white sword and yellow hair and they seemed to fade away, and Cloud stood above him -- not even _panting_, and with just a slight sheen of sweat on his forehead -- holding out a hand. Zack took it and the other hauled him up easily.

"Zack..."

"Thanks for the hand, Cloud. Now c'mon, let's finish these suckers off. I've got your back!"

Cloud gave a short, sharp nod. The others must have heard as well, because suddenly a wall of Wutain ninja and a few renegade Fort Condor guys and Barrett were behind them in a line, firing and throwing knives and leaping forth to engage the Shinra, while Zack and Cloud began cutting through. Cloud's rage carved a path. Zack whirled and danced and hacked Shinra out of his way, sure to keep his back to the fortress the entire time, well aware that only one of their barricades had broken.

Like it always, stupidity was Shinra's real thorn-in-the-side. Cloud's rage actually seemed guided, because the SOLDIERs and the officers seemed to go down and the rest broke apart and began retreating, stumbling back down the hill. They'd never had much of a plan in the first place, except numbers. And Zack knew they sure as hell hadn't expected a SOLDIER and... Cloud.

Cloud, a chipped old Mythril Blade still clutched in both hands, dived after those who retreated, and Zack grimaced before leaping in the way -- grabbing Cloud by the shoulder and hoping he didn't get thrown over the top of the fort in the process. But Cloud went still and just stood -- and suddenly it started getting quieter again, as things slowed down.

Adrenaline faded after just a short while, and Zack wiped sweat out of his eyes and realized they were still in good shape. Bodies in Shinra uniform littered the hill below Ft. Condor, but the winds blew the stench of death and dying in another direction, leaving the taste of victory. Some of the Shinra were just kids, troopers, and for them, Zack only felt pity. They deserved a burial. Hell, the monsters probably did, too -- who knew how human they'd once been.

Victory didn't taste that sweet, though, and in the aftermath, Zack only felt sick. Cloud must have felt the same. He took a step, coming to stand on a ledge and looking out over the few remaining Shinra troops as they scattered, and Zack saw something smoldering in Cloud's eyes again.

"...They have to be stopped." The other's voice came out so low it was almost inaudible. Zack turned to look at him with a frown, but suddenly Cloud seemed to vanish -- turning and heading away somewhere, disappearing amidst the leftovers of chaos. Zack stood for a moment, just outside one of the barricade walls and finally noticing the setting sun -- hours had gone by -- and then doing something stupidly amateurish. He bent over and puked. Zack stood coughing and hacking for a moment, before wiping his face and straightening up, irritated.

_Freaking hell..._

"Ya did it, Shinra. We took this one." If Barrett had seen Zack upchucking like a green little cadet, he didn't say. After kneeling briefly and helping one of his own AVALANCHE guys up -- Barrett stepped around the barricade and gave Zack a hard and yet not entirely distrustful look. "Seems like them Wutai guys lost three of their own. We took a few hits, but no one in AVALANCHE fell. Six of them Fort Condor guys are dead, though, and there are about fifty injuries, some of 'em serious. Some of 'em might not see tomorrow, anyway. But... it could have been more, way more. Ya did good."

That sounded like faint praise -- but coming from a man who'd spent most of the afternoon glaring at Zack, he figured that was as good as a slap on the back and congratulations.

"Thanks. We kicked their asses," Zack said, playing confident. "This isn't it, though. Shinra's not just going to let this one slide."

"'Course not."

Looking for Cloud all the while, Zack sheathed his sword on his back and forced himself to walk around, checking with the rest for injuries, giving a few words of encouragement to some of the kids, taking stock of the damage. Maybe three hours of pitched battle, complete confusion, and rushing adrenaline had resulted in something very much like a Shinra bloodbath. But it wasn't all carnage. Some of the Shinra types, the troopers and little guys, had thrown down their weapons at the end and were now in captivity. That was a good gesture, though Zack doubted Shinra would put forth any effort to try to win back hostages. And of course, their side had mostly escaped the heavy damage -- though Zack sat down after going around and checking with as many people as he could (still no sign of Cloud) and bitterly wished they hadn't lost anyone, as irrational as it was. Still, the Wutains looked towards him with grim respect, and the rest of the congratulations were aimed at him, with quite a few regards thrown in for Cloud, too.

They were heroes. Zack figured he'd feel happier tomorrow – that was how it always was. It was hard to feel too exhilarated, fresh out of carnage. He mostly felt tired.

The corporal in charge of the Rebels at Ft. Condor came trotting over to where Zack eventually ended up, sitting on the wall and overseeing some burial efforts. He actually threw Zack an awkward salute, before seeming to catch himself, and settling with a nod instead. "Sir, that was... that was great. We did it. We beat 'em back. I don't think they'll be trying that again, not for a while."

"Yeah, probably not..." Zack wanted to say it was mostly luck, but he managed to hold his tongue. "But we've gotta keep an eye out, just in case. More might come. Stragglers or something. You never know with Shinra."

The man half-nodded and half-saluted, but before he turned away -- probably to relay Zack's "advice" like it was an actual order -- Zack straightened up and stopped him. "Hey, have you see Cloud?"

"No, sir."

"Oh. All right."

Zack got to his feet slowly and easily, and it hit him -- this was Cloud's first real battle. Maybe Cloud hadn't felt the same fear and helplessness Zack remembered from his first, but he liked to think that was a learning experience -- and each time afterwards there'd been more control, more calm in the situation. But Cloud had gone into it primed for carnage. Maybe it'd make the kid over-confident... maybe it'd just set him off on the road to madness, if he wasn't already there. Zack didn't know. Worse, he didn't really know what to say when he found Cloud, either.

_Hey. You'll get used to it, kid. I mean, the whole mako-coursing-through-your-veins-blood-lust-and-who-the-hell-knows-what-else-Hojo-did-to-you. Whatever. _Zack scowled, and just as suddenly, he was thinking about Aerith. She seemed to know what to say, sometimes, and he wished he could see her, just for a minute. Maybe one of the troopers they'd captured would know something... It was a long shot, almost impossible, but he wanted to try.

...Tomorrow, maybe. Twilight gave way to late night, and Zack made a final walk around the grounds -- mostly spent telling the Condor guys not to salute him -- and then fumbled his way down to some kind of sleeping room, deep in Ft. Condor's underground caverns, planning on hitting the sack and not opening his eyes for a good six or seven hours. Sad thing was, he didn't really feel that tired in the flesh, just mentally. His body was pure SOLDIER. His mind seemed to have softened up a little on him. To Zack's surprise, as soon as he opened the door, there was Cloud -- sitting on the edge of one of the two beds in the room, a blank look on his face.

"Hey, Cloud...?"

Cloud didn't even acknowledge him, at first -- then he slowly looked up and forced another wan smile on his face. It didn't spread to his eyes at all. "Zack... sorry."

"Huh? What are you even apologizing for?"

They stared at one another for a moment, Zack bemused and a little worried, Cloud just looking at him with wide eyes. Finally, Cloud shook his head.

"Never mind... it's nothing..."

"Okay. Wow, I'm tired. You gonna get some sleep, too?"

"Yeah. In a little while."

"All right... look, I, uh... I wanna talk to you in the morning about some stuff..." Zack muttered, before crashing face down on the bed and just barely managing to kick off his boots in time. "...Nothin' serious, I mean... hey, you wanna go out and get a drink tomorrow night?"

"...Where would we go?"

"...Ah, good point... that little town's got like ten houses, huh? Probably doesn't even have a bar... not that getting a drink would make much of a difference," Zack grumbled, before forcing his head up to look at Cloud again, giving the other his best careful smile. "Don't worry. You'll feel like more of a hero tomorrow."

Maybe that was the wrong thing to say. Cloud looked at him, before averting his eyes -- and Zack would have said more, but he ended up collapsed on his pillow again, eyes slipping shut. Maybe his body _was_ kind of tired, really. Sleep seemed to be coming very easily.

Zack spent a while drifting, then grimaced and opened his eyes a little, looking towards Cloud. Still sitting, in the same position -- worrying. "Hey, Cloud... get some rest..."

"...They have to be stopped," Cloud whispered again. "...There's no other choice..."

"Hmmm? You talkin' 'bout Shinra? 'Course... that's what we're here for..." Zack murmured, his brain a little too sleep-addled to consider it. He dozed for a while longer, though, and then heard Cloud speak again -- one more time.

"I'm sorry, Zack. There's something I have to figure out..."

It seemed like part of some kind of dream, so distant Zack barely acknowledged it, making some kind of grumbling noise and then feeling his eyelids fall shut again. This time, it was a deep, dreamless sleep. Night and day didn't have much meaning in Condor's corridors, but a clock on the wall read 7:30AM Midgar Standard Time when Zack next cracked his eyes open. He frowned, groggily, then slowly rolled over and looked towards Cloud's bed.

It was neatly folded, probably not even used. Cloud was gone.

**

* * *

**

"I wonder if your gardening skills are some kind of manifestation of your powers as an ancient. You seem to have an affinity for growing things."

Unsurprisingly, she didn't respond right away -- instead continuing to lightly pat the soil around a patch of bright red flowers and straightening up with her watering can, giving each of them a small drink. Above, the round sun sat in the blue-gold morning sky, shining down on Costa del Sol like it did almost year around, signifying the beginning of another hot, clear late autumn day. The lazy morning routine of the town may as well have been inscribed in stone. Around them, the other residents of Costa del Sol's long line of beach villas were just beginning to wake up for the morning, groggily crawling out of bed and shuffling their way down to the beach, the bar, or the market. It was going to be another peaceful and uneventful day, unmarred by stress or worry and marked only by the sullen boredom of a resort town during an off-season.

She'd been up early, according to the guards. Every day since her capture, actually, she'd started pacing around her room before the sun even peaked over the Eastern horizon, though in the twenty or so days since her first arrival, her personal routine had changed. Her captors' empathy had provided her with something to do -- this little garden in the backyard of the villa had been decrepit and dying just two weeks before, but now it blossomed with reds, yellows, pinks and blues, a well-tended and vibrant part of an otherwise drab little plot of land.

When she finally answered, it was with a smile. "You don't need a special affinity for gardening... just a bit of patience. Want to help me? I could teach you."

She had changed over the past two weeks, too. Her face, once wan and pale after the ordeal of being in captivity, had color back now, and her eyes were vibrant and friendly again, full of life and energy. He couldn't say how much of it was natural, and how much of it was just a facade constructed to toy with the minds of her captors. He didn't put it past her to act. In fact, after her third escape attempt, he didn't put much of anything past her, including somehow ending up twenty miles up the road, in a Shinra uniform, with a Shinra ID, trying to book passage back to Junon with a credit card belonging to the Vice President of Shinra Inc. A few in-the-know SOLDIERs had arrived just in the knick of time. Where it not for them, he had the feeling she'd be on the run, escaping from Shinra for the _third _time since her childhood. The first had been more like an accident, the second a mystery, and the last thing he wanted was for the third time to be a complete embarrassment -- on his watch.

Right now, he watched her closely, and didn't see why she enjoyed gardening so much. It seemed like a menial, dirty, and boring pastime. "I don't have time for pointless hobbies."

"...Oh?" She acted surprised. "I guess not... you are the Vice President of the biggest company in the world. Then again... you've been standing there watching me for twenty minutes, so... you don't really seem that busy."

She continued gardening, now ignoring him again, but he continued nonetheless, undaunted. Most of his conversations with her were usually one-sided, anyway.

"...I really don't get it. All this talk about Ancients and the Promised Land... it's all very poetic and inspiring, but I'm not sure there's really anything concrete about it. It seems like a silly old myth to me." He shrugged again, carelessly, then flipped his hand through his hair, more out of habit than for any practical reason. "And it doesn't seem like you've ever shown any sign of being special, so forgive me for thinking all of this is sort of pointless. I'm a person who likes results, you see. My father's content to pump millions and billions of gil into things without ever really following up on whether they succeed or not. I'm not like that. At the rate we're going, actually, it really doesn't seem like this Neo-Midgar project is ever going to get on its feet... unless you're holding out on us for some reason."

"I think you're holding out on me," Aerith replied, teasing just a bit, completely ignoring his words. "C'mon, roll up your sleeves. You can help pull weeds. I could use a hand, you know."

"I don't think so," Rufus said, cocking his head slightly and giving her a bored, quizzical look. "Is it true that ancients can hear the voice of the Planet?"

"You're asking me if I hear voices?" Aerith squinted at him in the sun. "That's kind of rude."

He shrugged. "I used to think you were hopelessly naive... maybe even slow. You proved me wrong when you tried to escape the first time, and the next three times only solidified my belief that you're very, very aware of everything that's going on here. And you probably know exactly what Hojo, my old man, and everyone else wants out of you."

Actually, she didn't -- she didn't have a clue what any of them wanted because _Rufus_ didn't have a clue, either, but Aerith only gave Rufus a disarming smile. "This isn't very nice of me to say, but I used to think you were sort of, um... pompous, a little irritating, and not very interesting."

"Oh? And what changed your mind?"

"...I'm sorry. It really hasn't changed."

Rufus gave her the same squint-eyed and slightly askance look she'd given him a few seconds earlier. Seeing his expression, Aerith gave a big, exaggerated shrug, mimicking his posture almost perfectly, before turning back to her flowers.

For a while, the morning remained silent. Every day, this routine was the same -- Rufus came out here and tried his hand at gentle interrogation, attempting to be as patient and ingratiating as possible. And it always ended the same -- a bit of light mocking over flowers, Rufus growing bored and deciding to leave it for later, and her smiling and cheerful all the while, a helplessly convincing act he'd almost fallen for, at one point. She had no reason to be cheerful.

Her second escape was the reason she was here now, with Rufus. The President didn't trust Hojo anymore with the last living ancient, but he also didn't want to take the risk of summoning whatever hell had descended upon Nibelheim by keeping Aerith in Midgar.

What little Rufus knew about the incident didn't amount too much, especially now that it'd been swept under the rug, the long list of the dead erased from all official records, and the town rebuilt. They'd lost their strongest SOLDIER first class that night, but the President and Hojo had hated Zack for a long time -- and maybe because he was one of the few who'd kept his sanity in the aftermath of Wutai and with all the Shinra incompetence and idiocy that followed. Even Rufus admitted the higher-ups at his father's company were now falling prey, one-by-one, to utterly cruel incompetence and over-the-top megalomania, and a sane and grounded individual like Zack hadn't been destined to last long, in such an environment.

Even Rufus wondered just how long it was going to be before his father's paranoia, odd tolerance of hopelessly stupid, incompetent lackeys, and endless patience with immensely time and money-wasting projects drove him insane, too. It'd been a long time since Rufus had bothered being secretive about his own ambitions -- he wanted the company, most everyone from the janitorial staff right up to the President knew that, but being surrounded by his father's hopeless buffoons day after day had given Rufus one thing most of the less self-aware Shinra executives lacked -- patience.

So he was patient with Aerith, even if she was his only trump-card right now, his sole assignment and the only thing keeping him from being utterly worthless. Then again, if she turned out to be a fraud, Rufus guessed it wouldn't take long before Turks arrived at his own door, warm regards from his old man subject to delivery via way of bullet, right between the eyes. Rufus didn't fear such an eventuality, because unlike his father, he had no delusions about his own mortality. At the same time, the likelihood of that happening put a bitter taste in his mouth and an even fouler word in his mind -- _powerlessness_.

"You're pretty deep in thought, huh?" For the first time in a while, Aerith looked up at him, without the usual forcibly cheerful smile on her face.

"This Promised Land of yours. If it exists... is it really something regular people can see, like an actual land somewhere composed purely of mako, or is it only Ancients that can access it?"

He half-expected her to close off again, deflecting his question with a smile and some other lightly mocking nonsense. To his surprise, though, Aerith just looked at him, before getting back to her garden and giving him her simplest answer yet.

"Anyone can see it, whether they're Ancients or humans. It's just that most people don't know how to look for it."

"...Is that so? So is it even a physical place? Does it exist in reality?"

"...Shinra will never find it." Aerith's voice came out quietly, but forcefully, taking Rufus by surprise at first. With just a little consideration, though, he realized maybe it was a relief. If the Promised Land was something his father was capable of finding, Rufus didn't think it quite lived up to its reputation.

"Well, it's just as well if the Old Man never finds it. He'd stupidly squander it away, waste money, and probably destroy it within a year."

"...You don't like the way your father's running the company?"

"That's the understatement of a century." Aerith looked at him closely, and suddenly Rufus had the unnerving feeling that he was the one about to be interrogated. Aerith looked down, though, her face suddenly a little paler than before, the expression on it wistful, almost troubled.

"...But you can't really do anything to change it, can you?"

Rufus just shrugged. He didn't deny the truth in her words, but confronting such an ugly reality was the perfect way to ruin an otherwise unremarkable day.

"...He's assigned me to this backwater resort town for a reason. I hardly know what goes on in Midgar anymore."

Aerith considered it, and smiled a little. "Really? Even though you're the Vice President?" Seeing he wasn't going to respond, she knelt in her garden again. He thought she wasn't going to say anymore, either, but after a couple quiet minutes passed, she spoke again.

"The Planet is terrified, but I can barely speak to it. And even though I'm the last ancient, it only means I'm alone. The rest of them are in the Lifestream. Sometimes I can feel the Planet's fear... I see what the Cetra are doing, too, but... only little glimpses, sometimes. And what I've seen makes me worry. It's cold and confusing... I usually can't speak directly to them, nor can I hear them, but sometimes they whisper things. I think there's something wrong."

Utterly surprised solely because he was the one Aerith had suddenly chosen to confide in, Rufus just stood and looked at Aerith. She just continued to garden, but around them, the morning grew unnervingly silent. For some reason, the daily routines of Costa del Sol, laughter from the beach and the sound of kids running in the streets were absent, disrupted, somehow.

"...but even if something's not right... I'm powerless to change it." She lifted her trowel, then smiled up at him. "I don't know if you understand that or not."

"Actually..."

"--There is one thing I'm certain of, though. Neither you nor your father will ever have the Promised Land. It isn't yours. It isn't _theirs_, either."

The morning's silence fell between them for a moment longer, before Rufus shrugged and flipped his hair out of his eyes. Now he was the one feigning nonchalance, unwilling to admit the ridiculous truth -- something about Aerith suddenly bothered him, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it. She didn't have any special powers. She wasn't unique in any way. She just happened to be an Ancient, but that was something meaningless, in this day and age. "Is that so? Are you going to stop us?"

"...I don't need to. Someone else will…" She stopped, suddenly, and shook her head, now looking sad and troubled. "I really don't think you're a bad person, you know. So when it comes, you might not even deserve it."

Rufus blinked at her, considering Aerith's words so intently that the sudden appearance of some grim-faced office assistant actually surprised him.

"Mr. Vice President? You're needed in your office. There's news from Fort Condor."

"News?"

"From the President." The assistant turned away abruptly, his movements fast and jerky. "I can fill you in on the way back if you want, Sir."

"Very well." Rufus didn't need to be filled in at all. No news always meant good news, because unless something was wrong, no one ever bothered telling Rufus much of anything. But if the President had actually bothered sending some kind of memo or message to Rufus's office in Costa del Sol, it meant there was a high likelihood that someone, somewhere, Shinra Inc. had been – to put it frankly, in a way that Reno might have described it, where he here -- colossally fucked up by something. Before he left the garden Rufus glanced back at Aerith, one time. Still gardening, still helpless and so inane looking that it was only after he heard the news of Shinra's worst defeat since the Wutain War that he started pondering just _what_ she meant by her warning, and why he found it so embarrassingly unnerving.

**Author's notes: **

1. That last scene with Aerith and Rufus took me a grand total of five rewrites until I finally had something I was even remotely satisfied with. ARGH.

2. What? No Sephiroth again this week? Well, it's been a while since everyone's favorite Cetra chew toy has shown up, so next week: Sephiroth returns to the storyline with a splash...literally. Again, thanks to everyone for reviewing/commenting/favorites/alerts/C2s/etc.


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter Ten **

Barely aware that the continual torture had ended until his breath left him and his mouth flooded with water, Sephiroth jerked sideways roughly and came lurching to a sitting position, looking around with confusion and barely able to make sense of his surroundings. After a few minutes, the heavy confusion blanketing his mind lifted, and he sat up, scowling, now soaking wet and sitting in the surf on a rocky ocean shore.

(...Now what?) The Cetra said nothing, and he peered around the empty beach again, squinting and trying to find something familiar about his surroundings. The beach itself was rocky and barren, and given the cold temperature and slight stench in the air, it meant he probably stood about fifty miles away from Junon, maybe.

_"Go to Junon."_

The Cetra spoke so suddenly he might have jumped, where he an easily startled person -- but that wasn't the case, and Sephiroth instead took a few steps and leaned against the base of a rocky cliff, looking out sullenly over the ocean and waiting. Finally, a low rumble of anger gradually reached its crescendo inside of his head, and he scowled at nothing in particular, directing all his irritation towards his captors.

(That's it? You're being purposely vague. You must think I'm going to try to refuse whatever order you have.)

_"You already know that you cannot refuse."_

(And what am I supposed to be doing in Junon?)

_"It is only important that you get there. Now, go!" _

Like he actually needed a reminder, the Cetra sent a bolt of pain through his head that nearly bowled him over, just to make sure he knew that they could throw him around like he was nothing. He faltered but didn't fall, bracing himself against the rock wall and then closing his eyes tightly, willing the immediate aftershocks to fade away. The Cetra's influence over him seemed eerily precise tonight, he decided -- just a little nonphysical slap and his nerves started screaming. He felt raw, somehow, a little ripped to pieces even without a single physical injury. Worse than the rawness was the feeling of bone-deep exhaustion, and there was also a strange of dizziness -- but it wasn't sickness. That was impossible.

Sephiroth ended up on the cliffs, standing and looking across the seashore, before turning and catching the scent of something odd on the wind. Fires, gunpowder, the odd-sticky residue the use of materia spells left in the air -- there'd been a battle nearby, and less than a day ago, he estimated. It'd been a pitched battle, too -- not just a small-scale skirmish. Turning and looking off towards the Northeast, he squinted in the darkness and re-orientated himself, realizing he was in the region of Fort Condor. He could guess what had happened, and wondered if it had been a victory for Shinra -- or for rebels. That they were already fighting pitched battles against one another meant things were proceeding quickly, and gave him an idea of the when of his surroundings – this was the time he liked to think of as the "present."

Beyond the scent of battle, the taste of smoke and the odd heavy residue in the air, Sephiroth could sense something else -- a deep, rumbling satisfaction. The Cetra were pleased. He frowned and walked along the cliff tops above the beach, eventually trekking inland and wondering if Zack and Cloud had been involved.

(...They were.) Certainly stole over him, rather suddenly, and he frowned and concentrated for a few moments, drawing up a picture of Fort Condor in his head -- and then he _saw_ it in little glimpses, images of the battle coming together. Shinra colors, rebel colors, AVALANCHE, and amidst it all, flashes of two SOLDIERs with gleaming white swords -- Zack and Cloud. Sephiroth realized his connection to the Cetra – and to the planet itself -- must have delved deeper than even they intended, because there was no real reason for him to be seeing such clear glimpses into events that had already transpired. It must have been the mako flowing in his veins -- giving him some sort of extra sense, perhaps the Planet's own memories.

(...This could be useful...If only...)

The Cetra seemed to keep watch over the flow of time. He wondered if it was possible that he had some kind of similar ability, held latent but slowly evolving. Seeing glimpses of events that had already transpired was one thing, but if he could see outcomes--

_"It's worth reminding you what your purpose is: you are only here to serve us,"_ The Cetra bored into his skull suddenly, but this time he didn't even cringe.

(But you're worried, aren't you.) Sephiroth didn't speak aloud, even if merely thinking while the Cetra buzzed and hissed made his mind feel much too crowded. (If I wanted to refuse your orders... what could you really do?)

Sephiroth paused, standing and feeling the night breezes flow around him, brushing back his hair and soothing a bit of the raw and feverish heat. The day preceding this had been a hot one, but even in the blazing temperature, he knew he walked on thin ice. Somehow, though, knowledge of what they could do to him didn't stop him.

(You could torture me until I break, I suppose. But that would also require you to eliminate your only weapon, wouldn't it? You can continue erasing my memories, but even that has its limits. If it was just my abilities you needed, you would have erased everything and made me into a mindless automaton, but you obviously rely on some knowledge I have -- which also means you can't see entirely into my mind, either. And you can throw me around, but you can't exert complete control over me, otherwise that's what you'd do. I'd just be a puppet. So, tell me. If I refused to take another step and completely ignored your orders, what would you really be able to do?)

He could sense the Cetra's anger now, all around him -- swelling, burning, and expanding, preparing to engulf him. He'd crossed a line --positively hurled himself right over it -- but in his satisfaction he realized they were also straining around for an answer while sizing him up, seeming to really consider him for the first time. Their state was kind of sad, actually. With the planet crumbling all around them the Cetra were somehow arrogant, petty, and short-sighted, eager to use him in what way they could and yet not thinking any of this all the way through.

"Well?" Sephiroth spoke aloud to the empty night, still waiting for an answer.

_"The planet will die if you don't--"_

"I already told you I don't care. You're not even giving me a choice, here. No matter what I do, you've promised me eternal damnation. What incentive do I have to follow along with your orders? I'm going to end up being your plaything for an eternity no matter what I do... assuming you'll even be able to do anything to me, once the Planet and the Lifestream have died."

They considered it for a long time -- arguing amongst themselves, their voices suddenly ringing and discordant -- before deciding on an answer. It came out gratingly, an uncomfortable mix between contempt and desperation tainting each word. _"Then what is it you want? Presume that you really are in a position to bargain, and tell us what you desire. We wish to rule over the Lifestream... perhaps you want a part of it, too? To rule alongside us?"_

Sephiroth considered the offer at face-value, knowing all the while this sparring with the Cetra was tantamount to walking right into the jaws of a trap and not really caring. The idea of ruling alongside them sparked something inside of him -- no, that wasn't his desire. Coming from their mouths it sounded asinine. A fragment of memory emerged, something twisted and splintered, like looking through a cracked kaleidoscope.

_I'm going to take back the Planet for you, mother..._

Cringing, Sephiroth grabbed his forehead, feeling a surprisingly sharp barb of pain lace its way through his skull, followed by a wave of intense dizziness. It blurred his vision, then took a few minutes to recede completely, leaving him hollowly pondering a single cold reality – everything he did now stank of absolute futility. They were insane. Trying to bargain with the Cetra was a ridiculous move, and with a sinking feeling, Sephiroth realized he couldn't even name what he wanted from them, knowing all the while they weren't going to deliver on whatever they offered.

"Rule alongside you?" Instead of wasting time considering it, he finally let out a derisive scoff and continued on his way through the night. "That's nonsense, and even if we made a bargain, I'd never believe you." His head started to feel crowded again, with all the Cetra humming away and chattering at once. The fact that he could recognize what insanity looked like in others did little to reassure him that he was still sane, not with all of their voices continually and messily derailing his own train-of-thought.

_"Then what is it that you want?"_ The Cetra actually started laughing at him. _"...Is it... forgiveness?"_

"I don't care whether I'm forgiven by you or not."

_"But you must care about someone's forgiveness."_

"No. I don't." A few faces went through his mind – maybe his own thoughts, maybe something put there by the Cetra -- and he grabbed his forehead again, reflexively. Everything still felt raw, torn open -- now he assumed this was merely the aftereffect of the Cetra's torture. They ripped into his mind and dissected every thought and impulse in order to use it against him, and that was far from the worst they could do to him. In fact, it was very hard to imagine what their worst was -- he knew he was yet to see it. And yet, knowing he would see it, eventually, kept him from really caring how much he provoked them. The Cetra's ultimatums had done nothing but instill suicidal recklessness in him. They took another probing glimpse into his mind, and laughed.

_"That does matter to you. You seem to truly desire some kind of second chance."_

"...You're mistaken. I don't want anything, actually..." Then it occurred to him, in a rather cutting moment of self-introspection. He really didn't want anything. His existence in this world felt superfluous and unnatural, somehow, and he felt nothing but distance all around -- he couldn't reach out and touch it any more than he could block it all out. Everything was ghostly and ephemeral, trapped in the flow of a timeline he didn't understand, and more than anything -- he didn't want to be a part of any of this.

_"Ah, I see." _The Cetra spoke with a more singular voice, now, discordance vanished, almost sounding reflective. _"At the end of everything, when Cloud Strife struck you down once and for all – a faint flicker of relief at the end of your life revealed the only remainder of your sanity. Even amidst the terror of dying, your own nihilistic nature led you to believe you'd simply cease to exist -- and that was easiest way of escape... how cowardly."_

"You must be mistaken …I'd never come to such a pitiful conclusion."

_"Is it a second chance you want?"_

"A second chance at _what?_" Usually the Cetra's words registered as little more than nonsense, but he listened to the irritation in his own voice and frowned, finding it odd that their inane, navel-gazing attempts at probing into his own mind were beginning to have an effect on him.

_"Maybe you're clinging to memories of your other life... your times with Zack that seem to come readily to mind, and there are others, too. Professor Gast, in particular. And it seems like you want whatever it is you had back then to return. Feelings of adulation, or maybe just simple regard... is friendship a concept you understand?"_

"You're over-analyzing everything. I already know my memories are meaningless, anyway. Did you forget? In this world, I've been dead since the age of seven."

For a while, the Cetra remained completely silent. Sephiroth kept walking -- anticipating -- and finally the Cetra broke loose, their laughter so intense it nearly knocked him right over. With the cloying, derisive sounds of amusement echoing through his head, Sephiroth took a few more steps and forced himself to a stop, leaning against a tree at the edge of the shoreline and gritting his teeth.

_"You're right. They are meaningless...your memories are nothing more than fragile lies pasted together by an even more fragile ego."_

Sephiroth stood for a moment, arching an eyebrow, before scowling and continuing onwards, now weaving down a forest path and peering about for any signs of people, animals, or monsters. The night felt dead and eerie, and the aftertaste of battle grew even more noticeable the further he advanced into the woodlands. The wind swept down from the North with a hint of cold in it, and again, he saw more glimpses of a battle at Fort Condor. The Cetra, always a background hum in his own mind -- though he was getting used to it -- continued in a kind of contemplative tone.

_"But your thoughts now have shown us something interesting,"_ The Cetra conceded, and he tensed again. _"A sort of relief, actually... one of the only people you thought of as a friend never had a real reason to start hating you in this world. You even showed a hint of concern for him... and for what reason? Do you desire to return to something you thought you had before?"_

"I don't even know what you're talking about, but it certainly sounds like nonsense," Sephiroth replied, finally, pausing again before continuing on his way, trying to pay more attention to his surroundings than the Cetra. "Listen, let's make this deal. I'll follow orders so long as you stay quiet and leave me alone for a while."

When the Cetra slammed him into a tree and sharp pains laced through his entire body, he actually smiled, a little satisfied by how readily they wasted their strength on torturing him. But he also caved swiftly, fell to his knees and began choking on mako, and they finally noticed what he was doing.

_"You're bluffing, aren't you? You flinch like a beaten animal when we so much as poke at you."_

"If that wasn't readily apparent, it seems like you're not as omniscient as you want me to believe. You're definitely not gods."

_"You're only confident now because you haven't seen the worst of what we can do. Now, go. You're wasting time."_

Sephiroth got back to his feet, barely aware that he'd fallen, and gritted his teeth in frustration for a few seconds. Originally, he'd wanted to believe that stripping away his defenses and leaving him helpless was about the worst they could do to him, but they'd disproved that. Erasing his memories, seemingly lighting the very mako inside of his cells on fire, tossing him around like he was nothing -- all of it was infuriating, and he clung to absolute fury only because any other feeling might have left him broken. He didn't want to be a mindless puppet. He didn't –

"_You're still pitifully lacking in self-introspection."_

"You're one to talk."

"…_Or is it that you've truly forgotten everything, to the point where you don't even see the irony in your thoughts? Do you remember any of what happened after you burned Nibelheim down?" _The Cetra asked the question curiously – and he thought he detected an odd hint of trepidation. Foolishly rising to what seemed like a challenge, Sephiroth started trying to pull together the pieces and fragments of his memories from after _his_ Nibelheim and then met an unexpected wave of dizziness jarring enough to force him to a jerking halt, clutching his head and closing his eyes tightly, choking on mako again. This time, when he paused to wipe the burning residue off his hand and onto a nearby rock surface, distant murmurs momentarily flooded his mind, incomprehensible, before vanishing and leaving the world tilting until he regained control. He didn't know whether this new sickness was the Cetra's usual insanity or his own sanity slipping, and worse, he couldn't be sure which was _worse_. The Cetra might have been psychotic, but new shadows loomed in his own mind, eerie dark spaces in the recesses left behind by erased memories.

"_Some of your memories are meaningless, but there are others that we _can't_ allow you to forget."_

A flash of burning light followed by a fleeting image of Aerith and an altar he recognized flooded his consciousness, but suddenly, inexplicably, everything went _black._

Sephiroth twitched seconds later, opened his eyes, and watched the world swirl for a long time before getting to his feet, more weary than confused, not knowing the origins of his sudden black-out but willing to guess _they_ were directly responsible.

"Just what are you doing to me now?"

To his surprise, the Cetra didn't respond. No laughing, no taunting – just disconcerting silence broken only by quiet murmurs, followed by the unusually invasive feeling of them _reaching_ into his mind, trying to unearth something. Even with everything else they'd done, such a simple action sent him stumbling, clutching his forehead again and shaking with fury, unable to put up even the flimsiest defense against them. He'd never encountered an opponent like this, _ever_, one who left him pitifully unable to strike back, to even defend against their attacks. The Cetra searched at will through his mind and memories, seeking something and crowding his own thoughts out of his head entirely for a few cold and oddly distant moments, before finally and abruptly leaving him twitching with the aftershocks. They could do as they wished to him --

-- And yet they _certainly_ weren't omniscient, because whatever they sought for in his mind remained hidden. Maybe they weren't any more capable of seeing outcomes and results than he was. Maybe their insanity blinded them completely to most things. Perhaps the increasingly noticeable cracks in Sephiroth's own mind blinded him to reality, and what he couldn't see about himself, they couldn't discern even if they completely invaded his thoughts.

And maybe none of it mattered. A fleeting hint of a frown passed over his face, and he continued onwards into the night, feeling all the while that he was walking right into the jaws of another of the Cetra's many traps and completely oblivious to some greater, lurking danger awaiting him.

**

* * *

**

_Well, shit. _

Zack took a deep, gulping breath and realized he was letting it get to him again, before pausing and leaning against a tree, scratching his head and resisting the temptation to go and dunk his head in the nearby stream. His nerves were getting the best of him, and he didn't really know why.

Okay. That was also bull. He knew exactly why -- somehow he'd expected he'd be able to waltz onto the battlefield and take a chunk out of Shinra fueled by anger alone, but he didn't expect anything afterwards. Suddenly, members of AVALANCHE, Wutains, and all kinds of disparate groups and causes looked at him with actual grim respect in their eyes. The Fort Condor rebels saluted to him, Wutains didn't protest his every word, and it seemed like Tifa and even Barrett were both pretty willing to admit he knew what he was doing. So, he was now a leader.

And there were two problems with that. The first was that there was a difference between being a top-ranking SOLDIER officer mostly acting on orders dropped down from the executive levels and being the leader of a ragtag and ever-growing rebel army that actually wanted to take down an entire empire. Suddenly it felt like him against the world, one little renegade idiot standing with his sword in hands facing down the most powerful military force in existence -- and that was a bit of a confidence shaker. His confidence felt even more shaken, now that things were picking up, starting to grow.

The second day after the victory, when he'd woken up in the morning and blearily crawled out of bed, rubbing his eyes and groggily confusing the cave for his old flat in Midgar, for some unknown reason, Zack had heard voices -- the real kind, not the head ones. Emerging from his room and into the hall outside he'd been assaulted with a whole bevy of new people, crowding every single corridor inside of the now-increasingly-tiny fort. The little town outside and to the north of the Fort looked fit to explode, and a growing encampment Zack simply called Tent City sprawled out across the valley around Condor, and there were more. People had news of Shinra's loss, probably all exaggerations -- and they were coming.

...And somehow, when he started hearing talk of how a renegade Shinra SOLDIER was one of the main reasons for their decisive, near-complete victory, he realized he was the main selling point. People wanted to follow a SOLDIER only because they'd been hearing all their lives how unstoppable they were. But that wasn't it -- he could sense it, a real, palpable rage all directed at the company and growing every minute, practically leaking out of the very pores of the countryside. People whose properties and lives had been destroyed by the sight of reactors rising towards the horizon above their small towns, the slum-dwellers from Junon and Midgar who'd known nothing but the dirty underside of a plate all of their lives, people from towns that had been decimated by reactor accidents... it was amazing, seeing all of this pour out at once, like a single battle really was the breaking point.

From a tactical standpoint, the culmination of the long-standing, festering hatred towards Shinra Inc. was definitely a good thing. Most of the people flooding into Condor were freaking kids who didn't know their asses from holes in the ground, and they even had to turn away some of the very young, very old, and very helpless -- but a lot of good men and women were showing up, too, bringing whatever they could with them. Fighting experience. Money. Chocobos, in the case of two kids who'd came down from the Swamps, from where their father ran some kind of ranch. Minerals from the mines. Food and grain from the farmlands down South. Insider knowledge -- two Shinra managers had already arrived right from the company. Neither had seemed very useful, though Zack had assigned both of them to do the accounting stuff (it'd only occurred to him this morning that rebellions actually _needed _accountants).

But from a rational standpoint? It was all freaking overwhelming, because as Zack, Tifa, and a few others stood at the fortress entrance and greeted every newcomer and walked through the encampments, he realized with a sinking sensation that he'd somehow become the head of a big, writhing crazy snake.

The second problem with the situation was the biggest, though. Cloud was gone. On the first morning after the battle he'd woken up to an empty room, and even with Tifa worrying herself sick and Zack tearing through every nook and cranny of the fortress and the little town beyond, not a single trace or rumor of Cloud even emerged. It was like the other had simply vanished, and for all Zack knew, he may as well have.

It hurt a little. Tifa worried to the point of being unhealthy, and when she thought no one was looking, a kind of shell-shocked and heartsick look kept on spreading over her face. And Zack, oddly, let it start to sink in by the end of the next day that he was alone, now, and realized that maybe he needed Cloud more than Cloud needed him -- though whatever he'd left to do, Cloud was _at least_ sorry.

The weird thing was, it didn't really worry him, so much as it left him feeling tired and a little empty, maybe even confused. Cloud definitely had some kind of good reason, but he'd never given any indication what it was. Zack just remembered how distant Cloud had been ever since waking up from mako sickness, and hoped the kid could deal with whatever it was that he was trying to take all on his shoulders.

To each their own burden, Zack supposed. To each their own --

"Well, _shit!"_ It felt good to cuss and shout a little at the night sky. He wasn't exactly trying to be inconspicuous, anyway, and letting out a bit of frustration eased his nerves, just a little. Around him, the night was neither quiet nor noisy, just a woodland with hooting barn owls and other night creatures masking an overall feeling of unease. But coming out here to clear his head was a good idea. Zack liked this little forest during the night, almost felt at home here -- if the trees had been a little saggier and the ground soggier, it might have even seemed like Gongaga. Thinking of Gongaga brought images of home, his parents, and some of his childhood friends to mind, relieving and familiar in the light of all the confusion of the last few weeks… hell, the last five _years._

Zack was out here now after some dragons, more of the big scaly ruby bastards he and Cloud had encountered just a few days back. They'd been menacing travelers around the area for a few months and Shinra hadn't done anything about it -- so it was up to the friendly neighborhood rebel army to sort it out. That'd been Zack's determination, anyway. Barrett had taken one look at Zack before he'd left and scoffed.

"Gonna desert or something, Shinra? You seem pretty eager to be gettin' outta here."

Zack had just played it cool and confident, an act that he was way too good at putting on. "Hey, it'll be easier sending me after 'em than it would be to send about fifty other guys, wouldn't it?"

Surprisingly, that kind of stupidly over-confident statement -- even if there was some pretty obvious truth to it -- seemed to have amused Barrett, though, and Zack had to admit that if they could put the whole Shinra thing behind them, the two of them were probably set to become pretty good drinking buddies, at some point. Sitting at a bar even if alcohol didn't do much to blood tainted by mako was just one way to clear the head.

Hunting dragons was another. Zack figured that meant he was kind of a weird person, but he'd also stopped caring about stuff like that an extremely long time ago. Maybe _that _was his main problem.

And he had another problem: No Aerith. No sign of Aerith. No Shinra guys with any information about Aerith. No indication that she was either alive or dead, and if the latter were the case, suddenly he didn't feel so hot about being the leader of a rebellion, because the others didn't need to rely on the total berserker he knew he'd become if they'd killed Aerith. But maybe no news meant good news. He certainly had to believe that about Cloud, anyway.

Zack heard a rustle in the nighttime forest, and dove backwards suddenly, sensing the dragon before he saw it, then charging. It felt good to use his muscles again, to not have to think for a bit -- he dodged a great clawed paw and hewed the dragon's head off, then flipped backwards, landing in a crouch and avoiding a puff of flame from another. These definitely weren't the regular local monsters -- dragons smart enough to actually organize an ambush couldn't be found anywhere in nature, not even in the far North.

Two of them came from the side, now, streaking towards him and hissing. Zack whirled and dispatched the dragon to his right almost easily, feeling the mako really begin to rush through his veins, and held his ground against the dragon charging at his left, blasting it with a well-aimed lightning spell and then leaping. Zack brought the Buster Sword right down on its head. The monster's skull didn't explode like it had with Cloud, but Zack ended it all the same and came to a stop, not even panting.

"SOLDIERS are real bastards, huh?" Zack asked one of the corpses, before scowling and looking around. There were more out here, probably tracking his every move. Fine, he thought. Let them come.

But it was definitely a little unnerving. These stupid dragons were pretty benign in their natural state, usually avoiding humans unless mako drove them nuts, and sometimes not even bothering to come out of their caves. Hunting them down usually wasn't necessary. These dragons, though, seemed positively driven.

Another leapt out at him, just as he predicted. This time Zack dove right through the flames, heedlessly, knowing that if he damaged anything mako would take care of it, except perhaps his clothes. They remained intact, though, and he landed right on the scaly back of one of the dragons and hewed away at the back of its neck. Another came crashing through shrubbery, trying to close with him -- restricting his ability to use his sword, another eerily smart move -- and didn't anticipate Zack driving his fist right between its eyes and crushing its skull. He dispatched it quickly and messily, and then stood, grimly taking stock of his surroundings.

Dragons were also solitary. No way in hell did they travel in herds of five or more. This particular group had taken the lives of about forty people so far, apparently, entire traveling parties at once -- and the fact that Shinra hadn't even sent out a cursory patrol looking for them meant that maybe Shinra was behind this, in some way. And that was a very shitty thing to do, even for Shinra.

A second later, Zack revised his opinion. Five seemed like a ridiculous number already, but six, seven and eight seemed to come right out of nowhere, diving at him from every angle -- every _bad_ angle, trying to try to hit a blind spot. More eerily smart behavior, and this time, it damn near got the best of him. Zack dove and rolled, avoiding the swipe of a claw and twisting around just as fast, throwing up his sword at the last minute in an attempt to block. A heavy clawed foot struck him and sent him flying, though lady luck kept him from slamming headfirst into a tree. Instead he skidded through the loam and rolled back to his feet just in time for a ninth dragon -- "OH, DAMN IT!"-- to come charging at him, hitting him in another blind spot.

_Nine damn dragons. _

Zack anticipated taking a few hits, but as soon as he turned to ward off the ambush, a flash of dark clothes before him swept out of nowhere and the dragon fell. Zack decided not to question it and whirled around this time, preparing for the next three. Two of them broke away towards the dark-clothed man who appeared next to him, and he went right for the third, now practically hissing himself. He drove his sword right into it and it deflected off a hard, scaly hide, before Zack blasted the dragon with his most powerful materia spell and leapt through the air, flawlessly pulling off an insanely flashy attack and splitting its head right open. He even pulled off a perfect landing, then turned around, wiping a bit of sweat off his forehead -- and scowled, when he saw the other leaning calmly against a tree, weapon sheathed, looking like he'd done no more than lift a finger. Two dead dragons sprawled out on the ground behind him.

Strangely, Zack's first impulse was to rush up to the other or jump up-and-down, and he didn't even know why. Luckily, he managed to suppress it -- possibly because he did feel just a little bit of disappointment that it wasn't Cloud -- but Zack couldn't fight back a grin.

"Just passin' through the area, Sephiroth?"

Grim and emotionless though he might have been, the other cocked his head a little, and perhaps the ghost of a smirk appeared on his stoic face. "You let your guard down."

"Hey, I would have been fine. What are you again, my drill instructor?"

The ghost of a smirk faded. Maybe it'd never been there in the first place -- with Sephiroth, it was hard to tell.

"There was a battle here, a few days back."

Zack nodded. "Yeah, there was. And know who retreated with their tails between their legs? Shinra. It's the first time they've lost since Wutai."

Seeing Sephiroth looked pensive, now, Zack turned to him with a smile. "I wanted to talk to you about all this, anyway. So I'm glad you're here. You got a minute? 'Course, even if you don't, I'll probably just follow you and make you listen, anyway."

Sephiroth actually seemed to consider it, before nodding. "...I'm in no hurry." He said that, then shifted in discomfort, almost like it was the wrong thing to say – or maybe for some crazy reason, like the voices in his head disagreed. Sephiroth was actually kind of a strange guy, Zack realized, but that didn't stop him from grinning.

"All right. C'mon. I want to show you something."

**

* * *

**

Sephiroth cast one glance back at the dragon corpses in slight consternation, before following Zack through the woods, heading South -- the wrong direction, back towards Fort Condor. They walked for a long, quiet couple of minutes before the ground gradually began to ascend, taking them upwards and out of the trees, to a rocky hill above the valley where the Fort sat. As soon as they were there, Zack spread his arms, a grin on his face.

"Here it is! Freakin' six-thousand people, maybe, all here 'cuz they wanna fight Shinra! And guess who's their leader?" Zack laughed, then answered his own question. "It's mine. It's all mine. They're all looking to me... and there's no reason why they shouldn't, huh? I've got the experience and abilities, I guess."

"Aren't you glad?" Sephiroth asked, carefully, looking out over their surroundings and deciding it was rather impressive. A sea of tents had sprouted and spread across the valley below Condor, and the little town less than a mile from the fort bustled with activity, even at this late hour. Flags flew, and none were Shinra. It seemed like the rebellion had gone with a red and blue flag, incorporating touches of AVALANCHE and Wutai alike, a sign of the two coming together against a foe greater than both of them -- but perhaps together, and along with the hundreds of others streaming in from all over the continent (and maybe all over the globe) they managed to equal Shinra -- or maybe surpass them.

"Glad?" Zack considered the question and laughed again, sardonically. "Yeah, I guess. But to be honest, it's... a little overwhelming. You think I'm in over my head?"

"...Shinra will capitulate swiftly in their current state," Sephiroth finally said, surprising Zack. "It shouldn't take much."

"You really think so?" Zack looked at him with wide eyes, and Sephiroth nodded.

"Shinra has nothing more powerful than SOLDIER. With your abilities, it shouldn't be a problem. What could they possibly throw against you? Scarlett has an endless supply of weapons that don't work. Heidegger is a worthless third-in-command to the President. The President himself is a buffoon, and his son isn't much better. They might have boundless wealth and resources, but they've done a poor job of handling them. They'll squander whatever they have and probably end up defeating themselves."

"Heh. You're right. About everything. You know this stuff, don't you?"

Sephiroth said nothing, but the Cetra started humming in his head, a distant, angry rumble. They'd been oddly silent the entire time, not even intervening when some kind of impulse had driven him to leap in and help Zack at the last minute, and not seeming to care that he was wondering off course, now heading in the exact opposite direction of Junon. But he'd felt interest spark as soon as he laid his eyes upon the vast gathering outside of Fort Condor, and now he could feel a mix of anger and unease. Something wasn't going according to the plan, and it infuriated them.

"Anyway, Seph... sorry, MISTER Sephiroth," Zack said, misinterpreting a frown as irritation as he walked around, coming to stand in front of Sephiroth. "What brings you here?"

"…I'm on an errand. Where did Cloud go?"

Obviously an unpleasant reminder -- Zack's smile faded in a flash and his brow furrowed in worry and consternation. "He disappeared the morning after the battle. I don't know where he went. I can't leave and look for him now that I've got all this to worry about, but... I don't even know why he left. It might have been battle nerves. He freaking ripped holes through Shinra the day before, made hamburger out of whatever he came across. It was unreal, like nothing I've ever seen..."

Hojo's work, Sephiroth knew -- and Jenova cells, implanted within Cloud, transforming into something beyond a mere SOLDIER First Class.

"Cloud muttered something that night, right before I went to sleep. I don't even remember what it was, I was too tired... and as soon as I woke up, he was gone. He didn't just leave me behind, either. There's some childhood friend of his, a girl named Tifa..."

That name sparked another series of vague memories, though Sephiroth forcibly kept them at bay, trying not to consciously get distracted by whatever lurked in the fog of his own mind. He didn't trust the Cetra not to alter his memories, and he certainly didn't trust his own mind to piece together the fragments into any kind of reliable framework, not anymore. He felt like he was in pieces, actually, with the mere suggestion of unpleasant memories pushing him to that strange, world-tilting dizziness.

"I think he'll be okay, though. That's the strange thing. I thought about it, and now that he's awake, it really seems like he's the one protecting me. He seems guilty, probably since he knows he was unconscious for so long. Which is stupid, because I already told him I'm not mad at him--" Zack continued on in the same vein, rambling, and Sephiroth thought instantly back to his one true meeting with Cloud, looking into this suddenly lucid glaring mako-blue eyes and hearing Cloud's words, soft and forceful.

_"...I remember."_

Sephiroth wondered if he'd only imagined it. Because if Cloud remembered --

-- Zack stopped pacing in front of him, taking a deep breath and growing calm again, before looking at Sephiroth closely.

"Now that you see all this, I've got a question to ask you. I'll give you some time to think about it, consult the voices in your head, whatever. So don't answer right away."

Sephiroth already knew what Zack was going to ask, and immediately the Cetra swelled up inside of him with an angry warning.

"Fight with us. I can't get away asking you to be my right-hand man, 'cuz I can already tell you're probably twice the commander I am. But..." Something in Zack's eyes flashed, and Sephiroth could see the truth -- Zack needed someone, _anyone_, apparently even someone he barely even knew. It was better than being almost completely alone, close to the center of a building storm. "…So, join us. I can tell you hate Shinra as much as any the rest. Hell, if Cloud comes back, and with you fighting, too, the three of us would be freaking unstoppable."

Sephiroth's most natural impulse, for reasons he barely understood, was to say yes -- especially with Zack looking right at him with those burning bright eyes of his, apprehension and excitement mingling on his face. Despite what he said, Zack wasn't patient enough to give Sephiroth time to think about it.

There Cetra weren't, either. A fiery blast of white-hot pain blurred his vision for just a moment, but instead of cringing he blinked it away. The Cetra hissed at him, whispering warnings and threats, subtle and sinister and hungry all at once, longing to punish him for the slightest misstep. He didn't even need to consult the voices in his head, really. He already knew what they were thinking.

"...Sorry. I have business elsewhere."

Some of the light went out of Zack's eyes, and Sephiroth almost felt something like _guilt_, of all things. The Cetra grew even angrier, and he had to fight an impulse to apologize again, even if it was ridiculous. This Zack didn't really know him. They weren't anything to one another at all, not comrades-in-arms, not commanding officer and subordinate, certainly not friends -- just two people who had met by what seemed like chance but was really a pre-engineered outcome tailored specifically by the Cetra and Sephiroth's own inclination.

"...Ah, c'mon..." Zack, again, looked truly and completely alone, before forcing a bit of his usual enthusiasm back into his smile. "...Well, I've got to take your word for it. So... if I get my ass in trouble again, are you still gonna come and save the day like a big show-off?"

Sephiroth looked at Zack, a little startled to hear the other sounded half-mocking, half-_serious_. "...What?"

"Man, are you clueless. You helped Cloud and I save Aerith. You helped us get to Midgar. And you gave me a hand just now... even though I could have taken those things on myself," Zack asserted, off-handedly.

"That was all coincidental."

"Hmm, really? You never did tell me just whose side you're on, in all of this. And there's another thing..." Zack looked at him, very carefully, narrowing his eyes a little. Sephiroth felt the Cetra begin to stir again, their anger immense, building, ready to crumble whatever frail defense he'd erected against a full-scale onslaught. For some reason, just the presence of Zack drove them into a rage, and it hearkened back to some old, half-buried memory lurking at the edge of his subconscious. He tried to leave it suppressed for now, not wanting to get distracted. His memories were all distractions.

"... I feel like I've known you before."

Sephiroth froze. It felt like the Cetra did, too -- furious and silent, listening as closely as he was and now beginning to actively worry. "...The first time we met was a few weeks ago."

Zack leaned in, looking closely at his face -- and then smirking. "You're talking a little more quickly than you were before. See, when you're a big damn hero like I am, you get pretty used to being recognized," he explained, with obvious irony dripping from his voice. The Zack he'd known, before Nibelheim, had never been quite so sarcastic, either. "I can see it on people's faces. I see it on your face, the way you act when I'm around. At first I just figured you'd seen me on a poster somewhere."

"I did a few times."

" I'm sure. But... where have I seen your face before?" Zack studied him from an alarmingly short distance, before backing up and circling halfway around Sephiroth, giving him a keen eye and putting his hand to his chin, strutting back and forth with an almost comically pensive look on his face. "Hmmm. It isn't just your face... it's not just that it's sort of familiar, it's more like... it's fuzzy, kind of like memories of when you're just three or four. It's hard to explain. You were a three-year old once, right?"

Sephiroth stared at him, nonplused. "Yes."

"And you probably don't remember yourself very clearly back then."

"No." He mostly had some fuzzy pictures of Gast, Hojo, mako tubes, lab instruments, and needles, nothing terribly coherent or meaningful. He usually didn't bother with dredging up those memories, and attached little meaning to any of them.

"But you know that if you're alive now, you were three once, right?" Zack said, waving his hands around, illustratively. "So you know something had to have happened to you, back when you were three. You potty-trained, crapped your pants in diapers, probably ran around outside and fell and cried, maybe played with other kids... You don't really remember those things, but you know you experienced them. And when you look at an old photo album you see yourself doing things you only vaguely remember, but you know those experiences were yours."

"...Just where are you going with this?" Sephiroth asked, a little dryly -- though inwardly, he already knew what existed at the heart of Zack's ramblings and dared to feel a little satisfaction at the Cetra's sudden mortification.

"Well, seeing you is kind of like looking at an old photo album of when I was three or two. I can't remember clearly, but I just feel like meeting you and getting to know you is an experience I've had. Sort of like... well, riding a bicycle. My mom took about a million pictures of me sitting on my stupid little bike, trying to figure out how it worked, and falling down like an idiot. Those pictures are all embarrassing as hell now, but she must have thought they were cute. And I must have learned from that experience eventually, 'cuz I don't have any problem riding a bike now. It's just second-nature, though it's been years and years since I've bothered doing something like that. Sort of like how I know it's stupid to trust some guy I met just a few weeks ago, but I did it anyway because that was second-nature, too. Seeing you is like looking at an old photo album." Zack smirked. "It's an experience I know I've had… but I don't remember it very clearly. It's behind some kind of fog, almost, just like the memories from when I was a really little kid."

Sephiroth stared at Zack, utterly nonplused for a moment -- before frowning, slowly. The other man looked right back at him, intently, smirking just a little, probably able to see right through Sephiroth's nonchalance to the complete mortification resting just below the surface.

(...That isn't even possible.)

"So, what do you think?" Zack asked, finally.

"...I think that's absolute nonsense."

Zack raised his eyebrows, startled -- then, to Sephiroth's utter shock, he burst out laughing. Sephiroth just stared at him blankly, before finally, Zack calmed down, bending over and letting out a sigh.

"Whew. Yeah, I probably do sound like I've lost my damn mind, huh? I hear myself, and even I think I'm nuts sometimes. Maybe the stress is getting to me or something..." Slowly, Zack straightened up, still smiling. "So, we've never met one another before all of this stuff happened? Really?"

"...No." Sephiroth finally averted his eyes. "Never." He denied it -- but even the littlest action could be damning. Sephiroth turned away after a moment, starting his way down the cliff. "Like I said, I have business elsewhere."

The Cetra sat poised and ready to rip through his insides if he so much as opened his mouth on the wrong note, he knew, waiting and gathering their thoughts and strength for another onslaught. They were mad, ragingly mad, positively seething with anger, so intense he could already feel his mako-saturated cells beginning to sizzle. They knew how close he'd been to letting it all slip out -- their secrets, their identity, the truth behind his own actions -- and it drove them right to the breaking point.

Thankfully, Zack, the root of their anger, didn't follow. With just a few yards between them, though, he called out, sounding a little amused.

"Hey! We'll meet again, won't we?"

"...I don't know," Sephiroth muttered, truthfully.

"Just so you know, I don't really plan on taking no for an answer. If you're ever around, come join us and help me beat the shit out of Shinra. Okay?"

"...I'll consider it."

"Ha, that's what I wanna hear. As good as a yes, as far as I'm concerned. And -- oh, wait, Sephiroth. One more thing."

He paused, feeling exasperated again -- and not really minding, once more, a little startled to find that Zack's annoyances were distractions he could actually take. "What?"

"Uh... Aerith. Have you... Have you seen anything, or... do you know where she might be?"

Sephiroth saw it again -- Zack might have put a grin on his face most of the time, but he seemed troubled, right now, and even more so now that he stood at the top of the small cliff in the dark, hands in his pockets and his expression darkening a little. Sephiroth figured his departure didn't make much of a difference, but without Aerith and Cloud, probably the two most important people in the world, Zack's usual confidence seemed uneasy, even shaken.

Sephiroth considered it, briefly seeing green in his vision again -- Lifestream, controlled by the Cetra, but a part of him, too -- and suddenly he caught just a glimpse of Aerith, kneeling over a garden somewhere in the sun, a forced and brave smile on her face and worry in her eyes. It was too brief an image to pick anything revealing out about the location, but it was definitely Aerith, and she was definitely alive.

"...I don't know where she is. I haven't heard anything," Sephiroth said, impassively. "But... she's alive, and I think she's safe. For now."

Zack stared at him, wide-eyed. "You're sure?"

"Yes."

Zack's wide-eyed look melted into a grin. "I'll take your word for it, then. See ya later, Sephiroth. Don't let the voices in your head boss you around too much."

Sephiroth looked at Zack for one long moment, before turning and walking away in silence, hearing a good-natured scoff behind him. He quickened his steps as soon as he reached the forest path, wanting to put as much distance between himself and anyone else as quickly as possible -- knowing what was coming. The Cetra were now one concentrated mass of utter fury fueled by panic, of all things. Zack _scared _them. And Sephiroth felt like a ticking time bomb, ready to messily explode and take the entire world down with him.

Finally, about three miles away, and on the North road towards Junon again, Sephiroth forced a smirk on his face, bluffing again and doing a convincing job of it.

"Seems like you didn't do such a good job of changing things, after all. What was it that you were saying before?" He asked, pausing a moment, his voice as conversational as he could manage. "'Tiny ripples spread along the water's surface.' What a load of nonsense. If time's anything like water, you're nothing more than brats splashing around in a children's wading pool and trying not to drown in it. If Zack has an idea... and if Cloud _remembers_, just how badly did you screw up, anyway? The Lifestream must not behave quite like you think it does."

As soon as they struck, his face hit the dirt (they knocked him down effortlessly), thankfully muffling his own helpless screams, but no matter what they did -- no matter how badly they tore into him, violated him, and shredded his mind and his memories into increasingly unrecognizable pieces -- they couldn't shake the deep feeling of growing satisfaction. Midway through what felt like a lifetime's worth of torture, the Cetra stopped abruptly, as if coming to the same realization. He laid, panting on the ground, curled in a near-fetal position, awaiting whatever absurdities they were going to subject him too next -- and expecting them to spit out some kind of sharp retort, irritable and petulant, just like children.

They didn't. Instead, they were sickly sweet, and Sephiroth felt an odd sinking sensation again. Whenever the Cetra's anger faded and their calm, guided complacency returned, it usually meant they had the upper-hand again.

_"Just go to Junon. Now. You've wasted enough time."_

An order. Nothing more. Sephiroth rose to his feet slowly, trying to keep his limbs from shaking and letting his eyes refocus. His mind felt too crowded to even think.

"What now? You won't even tell me?"

A lazy non-physical slap nearly bowled him over, but the Cetra sounded calm, nonetheless.

_"Just go, Jenova's child. You have work to do."_

Sephiroth remained still for a moment, silent, before putting one foot in front of the other and walking, continuing on his way towards Junon with silence in his head and hateful apprehension building inside of him.

**author's notes**

1. This is the "calm before the storm," so to speak. It's also the last of three fairly long chapters. Next week is my "short" chapter… which will probably clock in at about 6,500 words.

2. Next week: Sephiroth in Junon, a message from Cloud. Once more, thanks for the reviews/comments, and please keep 'em coming. Knowing what you (the audience) are thinking about and reading your opinions/comments is not only fun, it's very, very helpful to the writing process.


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter Eleven **

Rain waited in Junon, brought in by suddenly fierce autumn winds blasting down from the North. They buffeted the Gelnika transport during the entire landing, and when it finally hit the runway the aircraft wobbled and tilted sideways, dangerously, before snapping back in the other direction with a loud cracking noise. When the craft came to a stop a few hundred feet later, its engines struggling and its entire frame shaking, Rufus just barely managed to unclench his fists and draw in a breath. The landing had been a close one, and he wasn't allowed to look anything less than perfectly poised.

By the time he stepped out of the transport, though, and a few waiting Shinra troops saluted him, Rufus was all composure again, walking with a briefcase in hand and putting forth an air of calm, forced complacency. His nerves were a little frayed around the edges. A long flight through buffeting winds and monsoonal rains was the least of it, a minor irritation compared to the rumors swirling around even the peaceable Costa del Sol. Rufus knew the truth behind the rumors -- whisperings about rebels at Condor and murmurs about Wutains attacking reactors and Shinra bases in the East and disappearing, led by their Princess, were just the tip of the iceberg. Unfortunately, Rufus looked around the base at Junon -- lax security, few SOLDIERs, the actual Junon offices on low alert -- and knew he was one of the few who actually saw the need for any kind of action whatsoever.

Until the memo last night, he had been certain that his father was the same as the rest of Shinra -- complacent, not willing to believe anything was a threat until heads actually started rolling. Now, with uneasy knowledge about the contents of that internal memo, delivered unremarkably via email, Rufus had arrived in Junon thinking maybe things were finally serious enough for his old man to take notice.

Junon shattered that conception quickly. It was business as usual here, and every person seemed blissfully unaware that trouble lurked on the horizon. He suspected Midgar was much the same -- and that was deeply troubling, just another indicator of the madness sweeping the company. Rufus followed an armed escort inside and went on his own up several flights of stairs to a small, ornate private office sitting above the main room, overlooking the raging seas. Through pouring rains whipped by gusting winds, he couldn't even see the water below, but Rufus wasn't in the mood for sight-seeing, anyway. He sat down at the desk, greeted by a pile of paperwork, and scowled.

"What's a report from the science department doing here?" Rufus asked, finally, looking up as Reeve, his father's Head of Urban Development, entered the room with a frustrated look on his face. Reeve paused away in surprise, obviously not expecting to see Rufus so soon.

"Mr. Vice President? I wasn't aware that--"

"--The President reassigned me here."

"...He did? I wasn't aware of--"

Rufus fought to hide his irritation. "Surely you received some kind of memo."

"Er... yesterday I got something about one of Hojo's specimens being moved here. The Ancient, I believe."

"Yes. That's it."

"...It didn't say anything about you, Sir."

Rufus fought again to keep an irritated tic in his eyebrow from manifesting, instead folding his hands under his chin and giving Reeve a sullen glare. "The Ancient is under my watch."

"...Oh." Reeve narrowed his eyes. "...This is my office, sir... but I guess you're free to use it."

"Like I need your permission," Rufus said, and Reeve's frustration grew even more apparent.

Frankly, Rufus was surprised the other man hadn't resigned yet. Of all Rufus's father's head flunkies, Reeve was the only one with something even approaching a conscious so far as Rufus could tell, and it had somehow survived a good ten or twelve years of constantly being handed projects that were either necessary but under-funded or completely frivolous and conspicuously over-funded. Only a few weeks before, Reeve had transferred, leaving his post as Head of Urban Development in Midgar and coming here, to Junon, working in a figurehead position. Rumor had it Reeve had finally spoken his mind, offering his true opinions about the Neo-Midgar project right to the face of the President -- automatic career suicide, Rufus knew. Reeve knew too many company secrets to outright fire and had too many corporate connections to murder, so here he was, a hundred miles from Headquarters, 'reassigned.'

Rufus knew something about being 'reassigned.' The only reason he'd spent most of the past few years in Costa del Sol was because his father wanted him far, far out of the way. Assigning Aerith to him had been an afterthought, done tentatively because he knew his father didn't trust him -- but Rufus had taken on that job without hesitation, and now continuing to watch over their supposed Cetra was his best way to get back on the main continent, closer to Midgar, and closer to the center just in time to see things starting to crack and crumble.

It was kind of pathetic, really. Rufus admitted to using Aerith's transfer as an excuse to transfer himself, even knowing all the while that it wasn't what his father had intended. It didn't matter. Costa del Sol, with its endless sunshine and mountains of meaningless paperwork and pointless board meetings spent discussing trivialities no longer suited him. It never had in the first place, actually. Aside from that, last night's troubling internal company memo and all of its implications filled Rufus with some strange kind of excitement, dulled only by the fact that none of the action was bound to come to Costa del Sol. Junon was another story.

"Er, can I still work here for the day?" Reeve asked, breaking into Rufus' thoughts and sounding a little frazzled as he sat down at one of the desks on the side of the room. "You won't mind?"

"...No." Rufus picked up the folders on the desk, noticing and not really caring that they were all intended for Reeve's viewing. The Science Department Memo was unenlightening – some kind of report about widespread reports of sterility among both humans and animals, with some private investigative groups pointing towards Shinra's reactors as the cause, and others saying it had something to do with fluctuations in the Lifestream. Shinra scientists were undecided, and wanted more funding to do further research. Rufus picked up one of Reeve's pens and signed off on it, then eyed the rest of the paperwork. "So, this is what you do here?"

"...You can take over if you want, Mr. Vice President."

Rufus had the distinct feeling Reeve was mocking him. He looked over at the other man, who sat drinking his morning coffee, guarded but also surprisingly calm, revealing that he was no longer part of the inner circle. He hadn't received last night's memo. Surprisingly, though, it was Reeve who broke the silence.

"That's the third or fourth time someone from the Science Department has asked for more funding to look into this sterility thing. I'm not keen on all of the scientific details, but there are widespread reports of individuals being unable to conceive children. It's happening in otherwise healthy communities... Several private groups seem to think it's the reactors--"

"--That couldn't possibly be true. The people living in Midgar's slums receive about 300 times the recommended safe dosage of mako exposure every day, and they breed like rabbits."

"Well... only about half of the communities affected are downwind of the reactors, so..."

"--If it isn't caused by the reactors, it's not our problem. And even if it was, it still wouldn't be."

Reeve looked at him, and Rufus realized he was the one being assessed, now. The other man's expression grew almost startlingly flat, and to Rufus' surprise, he didn't let the subject drop. "Your father said the same thing."

It took a moment, but Rufus recognized an intended insult. After a failed attempt to lackadaisically shrug it off, he cocked his head sideways just a bit and studied Reeve, interested enough to probe a little further. Now that he considered it, the other man seemed to have grown a surprising amount of back-bone -- during Rufus' years in Midgar, the most he remembered was that Reeve, although competent and loaded with a conscience, was a rather meek, mild-mannered, and timid individual.

"You were in Midgar up until about a month ago, right? It's been a good three years since I've been there. It sounds like it's falling to pieces."

Surprisingly, Reeve looked right at him, the Vice President of the company and son of the President, and didn't even hesitate to speak his mind. "Your father is running the company into the ground." Still, Reeve's expression darkened, as if expecting some kind of immediate and terrible retribution. Instead, he stared in genuine surprise while Rufus Shinra actually leaned back in his chair and let out a bitter, sardonic laugh.

"Tell me about it. That's been true for a long time, though. Did you happen to hear about all of that nonsense at Fort Condor?"

"...It was a humiliating defeat." Reeve chose his words with care. Like all Shinra flunkies, he was incredibly mindful of constant traps lying in wait for every employee that dared speak their mind.

"And we're in for even more humiliation," Rufus said, surprised that all of this was almost coming out gleefully. "That stupid Wutain Princess seized Cosmo Canyon."

Reeve's eyes widened right away, solidifying Rufus' suspicions -- Reeve was probably safe, definitely no longer one of his father's confidantes. He seemed much too disenchanted with Shinra in general to be considered part of the inner circle. He might have been too intelligent, for that matter. The President didn't like people asking questions, particularly when they were concise and to the point, and Hojo, despite being confident in his own supposed genius, didn't like having anyone around who could cast any kind of doubt on his own machinations. Both of them were like a tag-team, working in unison and making every attempt to drive Shinra Inc. to insanity and beyond.

At the same time, Reeve sat looking at Rufus with a little more interest than before.

"Is that so? When did that happen?"

"Last night. No one even knew how many Wutains were on the continent. And no one ever thought those hippies at Cosmo Canyon would arm themselves, but they were right there, alongside the Wutains, throwing Shinra right out of the region. We no longer have a single base or outpost within fifty miles of Cosmo Canyon. Doesn't look like we're going to break ground on a new reactor out there any time soon."

"Are they acting in together? The Wutains and Fort Condor rebels?"

"Not as far as we know." Rufus smiled, coming to the other contents of the memo, and thinking of Aerith a little, all the while -- there was something else interesting about last night's report, a little detail that all of the official report writers were trying their hardest to suppress. Deciding he could have Reeve killed later if he proved troublesome, Rufus revealed the final, damning bit of news. "You remember Zack? Our top-ranking First Class? Hero of Wutai?"

"Of course. He was a good man."

"Maybe. Just not a particularly loyal one. We seemed to have made a mistake, by capturing his girlfriend..."

"He's dead, isn't he?"

"No, not quite. He's actually leading the rebels at Fort Condor."

The guarded expression now left Reeve's face, and he went pale. "R-really?"

"Yes. Think about it. One of our most powerful SOLDIERS, if not the most powerful... leading an army. Against us."

"They can't possibly have a full army--"

"Not from what I've heard. But do you know who our top military mind is, Reeve?"

Reeve nearly blanched. "...Heidegger."

For a moment, both of them sat and considered the ugly truth in silence. Reeve now looked both thoughtful and worried, though Rufus could barely hide his amusement. He wanted Shinra Inc., had more or less had his eyes on the President's office since graduating school, always certain he could do a far better job than his father. He'd even put some serious consideration into just taking the company by throwing his own coup -- and for years and years, the only thing stopping Rufus had been SOLDIER. All of the First Classes were unquestioning, inhuman brutes who committed large-scale massacres as easily as they breathed, and short of starting his own super-soldier training program, Rufus knew throwing a coup against his father would have amounted to nothing more than a long, drawn-out suicide.

Nonetheless, the ambition festered inside of him like an open sore, and every time the company catastrophically failed at something, Rufus sat at his desk filling out worthless paperwork and fuming at the sheer ineptitude, all the while cataloguing the hundred or so ways he could have done a better job of handling his father's many near disasters. This time, though, all that remained was grim amusement. These two latest disasters, along with the rumors of near-bankruptcy floating around at the upper levels of the company due to all of his father's needlessly wasteful pet projects, had Rufus wondering whether or not he even _wanted _to take charge of Shinra. Leaning back in his seat, he turned towards Reeve again, in a thoughtful mood.

"To be honest, Reeve, I think Shinra in trouble. People will see that Shinra can be defeated, and more and more of them will start flocking to Fort Condor... probably Cosmo Canyon, now, too. We've been trying to downplay everything that's happened, but rumors spread fast. It seems like everyone at headquarters has forgotten that people are supposed to be _terrified _of Shinra. That's why we were able to take over in the first place -- no one resisted because SOLDIER, the Turks, and the rest of the monsters terrified them. But the SOLDIER program fell apart five years ago, and one of our strongest monsters is leading the fight against us." Rufus sighed, then tipped back in his chair and smirked at the ceiling. "And my father only knows how to spend money these days. At the rate this is going, this entire continent will fall to the dogs by the end of the year."

"And what will you do, sir?" Reeve sounded genuinely curious, maybe even a little apprehensive.

"What will I do? I'm not in charge."

"...You'll just let it all fall to waste?"

"I don't have a choice... unless something happens to my old man, I think." Rufus leaned back in his seat and tried to look really blatantly suspicious. In reality, he didn't actually have any kind of plan for taking out the President, and he knew more than anything that his only trump card -- holding the supposed Ancient, a girl who didn't seem to do anything except sit around with a trowel and give him vague warnings -- didn't amount to anything. Rufus was about as powerless as any other run-of-the-mill Shinra manager. But he almost hoped Reeve would act in his own self-interest and send a report up the ladder, about how it seemed like the Vice President had _ambitions _about staging a take-over. Rufus didn't, actually. He planned on waiting for something -- a heart attack, a berserk SOLDIER, Hojo -- to take down his father and then waltz in, but he liked planting little seeds of fear in his father's mind and watching them grow. Plant enough seeds, and the President would finally give in -- bring Rufus back to Midgar under the guise of some new assignment in order to keep an eye on him, and give Rufus a good inside look at how the company was being run. Then, maybe --

Reeve derailed his train of thought rather suddenly. "How would you handle all of this? The rebels, the Wutains, all of that?"

"...Me? I have no idea. But I can tell you how my father will handle it: he'll throw millions of gil after Scarlett's worthless weapons projects, whatever monster-of-the-week Hojo has decided to breed, Palmer's good-for-nothing space-program, and whatever it is that Heidegger does -- I've never figured that out, actually, he seems to screw up a lot -- and we'll be bankrupt while everyone else tears the entire empire to shreds. The Wutain War ended about ten years ago, and that was the last thing my old man managed to handle effectively. And even that's backfired, since I'm certain he was the one who gave the order to have the Emperor killed..."

The look on Reeve's face was very obvious -- he didn't seem to care whether or not Shinra survived. That was a kind of luxury Rufus didn't have, because if the empire fell, Rufus had the feeling he'd probably be executed or shot somewhere in the streets just to prove a point, perhaps even torn to pieces. If people were no longer scared of Shinra, there was no stopping that from happening. After years of stupid inefficient cruelty, Rufus imagined few would feel particularly merciful towards anyone with the Shinra name attached.

Even if it hadn't been by choice.

"So, is the Ancient here?" Reeve asked.

"...The girl's being transported, yes." Rufus gave Reeve a vague answer. In reality, Aerith was probably already shacked up somewhere in the Junon base and heavily guarded. She'd been as inscrutable as ever this morning -- charming some troopers into taking care of her flower gardens at Costa del Sol after she was gone, playing blissful ignorance when Rufus had pressed her a little about some detail of her escape from the lab. "I don't really know if she's an ancient or not. She doesn't seem to do anything special."

"...Hmmm. And yet she's supposedly the foundation for the entire Neo-Midgar project?"

"It seems like it," Rufus replied, before getting up to turn and look out at the window, watching the rain. He didn't feel like doing paperwork, and even if he'd tried to avoid it, he was fuming again, thinking of how badly things were about to be bungled and wondering if perhaps this _was _the time -- Shinra had enemies at every corner, and maybe those within Shinra would begin to take note of it, too. Rufus looked out at the rain, ground his teeth in silence, and wished anything but a seemingly powerless half-Cetra gardener was his only trump card in all of this.

**

* * *

**

From within a narrow alleyway between buildings on Junon's upper plate, Sephiroth watched the pouring rain, silently contemplating his next move.

The Cetra were silent for now, giving no indicator of what he needed to do, so he did what seemed most logical -- sat back and observed his surroundings, picking up on all the small details and weighing possibilities and options, trying to chose the best path. He'd already watched the Gelnika, one of Shinra's only remaining aerial transports, come to a wobbling near-crash landing and none other than Rufus Shinra step out, looking somewhere between peevish and shaken. It was somewhat surprising to see the President's only son here in Junon -- from what he'd gathered during his time at Shinra, the President preferred to keep his son as many continents away as possible.

There was little else to see, but Sephiroth crept around the upper plate and heard the occasional snippet of conversation, odd rumors. Shinra troops seemed more concerned over the weather than they did over anything else happening in the world, but the occasional murmur about Fort Condor and some mutterings about some kind of happening in the Cosmo Canyon area piqued Sephiroth's interest a little.

Really, though, he observed nothing that he hadn't already guessed, and as an early morning turned to afternoon, he retreated into another alleyway and leaned against the wall,, irritably, trying to fade into the shadows as successfully as he could. So far, no one had seen him except a few denizens living underneath Junon's plate, and they hadn't batted an eyelid. They were probably used to the occasional strange passersby.

(Just what is it you want me to do?)

_"Do you really have such a poor understanding of our motives?"_

The Cetra were testing him, and he didn't like it -- but for once, they were content to watch without coercion. Sephiroth leaned his head back against the wall behind him, his irritation deepening.

(Should I kill Rufus? Would that make any difference?)

He wasn't the only one irritated. The Cetra rumbled, anger slowly building along with pressure in Sephiroth's head. He scowled and watched the rain fall again, unimpressed by the exceptional dreariness all around him. But from late autumn onwards, Junon always looked like this -- a mess of rain and wind, bombarded by monsoons. For that reason, Shinra had decided to build Junon's reactor undersea, perhaps reasoning that millions of gil spent transporting that technology to the sea floor just off-shore was better than spending millions more on building a reactor that constantly needed repairs. The Nibel Reactor, one of Shinra's earliest attempts at exporting the technology outside of Midgar, had proven costly for that very reason.

None of this, though, gave Sephiroth any indicator to as what he was supposed to be doing, so he ended up creeping inside of the base -- keeping to shadows and alleys, remaining unseen by all of the inattentive troopers. On the airfield, two SOLDIER third-classes stood near the edge of the runway, making a show of observing some infantrymen in the distance while chatting amiably with one another. Sephiroth lingered behind crates and caught snippets of their chatter.

"Just what's the Vice President doing here, anyway?"

"I don't know. We didn't even get any kind of orders or briefing, so maybe he's not s'posed to be here."

"What about that other thing? You know, the lab specimen."

"Shit, I don't know. I thought it was going to be another one of those monsters, but it's just a stupid girl."

Sephiroth narrowed his eyes.

"Stupid girl?"

"I didn't get a good look at her. She looked pretty normal, all considered. Not like the usual lab specimen that goes through here."

Sephiroth remained still for a long while, before one of the third classes broke off, mumbling about the weather, and headed back in the general direction of the barracks. The other man remained for a moment longer, watching infantry-men miserably unload one of the Shinra transports before finally giving in and taking his leave, cursing under his breath.

(So she's here... your heir. What do you want me to do? Am I going to break her out again?)

The Planet almost lazily bombarded him, smacking him backwards into the wall behind him and sending a warning in the form of an immense stabbing pain, right through the center of his head.

_"...You will do nothing. Leave our heir as she is. She is safe for now."_

(...With Shinra? You must be kidding yourself.)

_"Don't misunderstand. If something should happen to her, you will suffer an even deeper agony than you can imagine. For now, though, she must stay where she is."_

(Then why am I here? Is there even a point to this?)

_"You don't understand at all,"_ the Cetra replied, in a sinister, ringing tone. _"Do we really need to guide your every action? Open your eyes. Open your ears. What do you perceive?"_

Sephiroth scowled irritably, and made his way through the shadows, eventually slipping into the base. Now on the main floor, Sephiroth ducked into another dark, overlooked corner, behind a stack of crates, and sat down roughly, putting a hand to his temple and enduring the Cetra's anger, in all of its arbitrary intensity. Open his eyes and ears to what? All he saw was the usual Shinra incompetence.

A few troopers came running by, then some SOLDIERs, shouting something about an ongoing military operation. After a few minutes of running about and confused chatter, though, a high-ranking officer came striding up the hallway, a grim expression on his face, talking to one of the Shinra Managers.

"All this nonsense about Fort Condor... everyone's just antsy. Nothing to worry about."

"--Nothing to worry about?" The manager, a businessman in his forties, looked pale. "This is the second time they've--"

"--They're just rumors. It's not serious."

Their conversation trailed away, and Sephiroth watched and listened as a total shift in mood slowly pervaded the base. Now Shinra businesspeople and soldiers alike walked around with uncertain expressions on their faces, most somewhere between scared and confused. Sephiroth crept from shadow to shadow, almost appalled by his ability to go so completely undetected -- until finally, a conversation between a recently promoted SOLDIER third and one of his friends, a trooper, made it apparent.

"I don't believe it. Those bastards at Condor managed to throw off another assault..."

"Really? You sure?"

"--There are thousands of them, now. The President sent some of his best troops out under General Heidegger... but they threw the assault back like it was nothing. Shinra went all out and got ripped to pieces, but everyone says the rebels hardly even _tried_--"

Sephiroth smirked -- almost able to sense the anger and raging determination of those bound to fight against Shinra, and duly impressed by Zack's ability to channel and control that anger, turning it into a force capable of toppling Shinra's empire. And Shinra, right now, was a company nearly in ruins -- irrevocably shaken by two small defeats, probably knowing that their grip on the populace was already slipping. It would only be a matter of time. The fear was gone.

And the Cetra were angry.

(...I don't get it. Shinra's on its way towards being destroyed, and you're angry?)

_"Fool."_ Another blast of pain, though this time, he didn't even cringe. _"You truly don't understand. Humans must destroy themselves. What will a one-sided victory achieve? There are only two people on this Planet truly capable of leading humanity towards complete carnage, but neither of you can do it by yourselves..."_

Sephiroth was about to respond, some kind of irritatingly flippant remark on the edge of his tongue -- but then he realized in a rush and understood, right away, just what it was that the Cetra wanted from him. He'd been mistaken in thinking that his purpose for being here was taking Aerith, or killing Rufus. Given the Cetra's goals, neither of those made any sense whatsoever.

The Cetra knew he'd found the answer, and he could feel their preening satisfaction again, emanating from each individual consciousness in unison. This time it caused something to bubble over inside of Sephiroth.

(I refuse.)

The Cetra's satisfaction crumbled to pieces, almost like he was the one who'd slapped them this time.. For a long time, the Cetra remained silent, unmoving. He didn't sense any recognizable emotion from them, didn't hear their voices -- they were either holding quiet counsel or considering his words. He just waited.

_"And why are you refusing to do this, Jenova's child?"_

The question cut straight to the heart of the matter, and Sephiroth realized he'd acted so reflexively he hadn't even considered the reason for his vehemence. But after just a split-second of consideration, a million answers came to him. None were worth explaining to the Cetra, who didn't really give a damn about his motives, so long as he made some attempt to follow their plans, or at least strive for their outcomes. Not this time, though.

(... Do I really owe you a reason? Do my reasons even matter to you?)

_"...Of all the insufferably arrogant creatures polluting the surface of our Planet, you are the worst."_

(You're the arrogant one. How is fighting for them _now_ going to achieve your goal? What are you even trying to do--)

"_How foolish of you…we've already explained it."_

(…I'm not doing this.)

For a moment the Cetra's reaction remained inscrutable, some emotion he didn't recognize quickly enough. It was only too late that he picked it out -- amusement.

Junon vanished around him, suddenly, and Sephiroth pitched forward, falling on his knees and catching himself before getting back to his feet, swiftly, angrily. Around him, through gray mists, he could sense the presence of something else, now, shifting and crawling about and reaching towards him, unseen. He put his hand to his sword and waited, grimly, trying to make sense of whatever new form of insanity he was about to face, anticipating something painful and preparing to fight against it in whatever little way he could.

_"You're a fool," _their voice came from all sides, echoing and hollow as if coming from a great distance. No anger, this time. He only sensed mild irritation layered over the top of wry amusement, though there was something deeper, a state of being he easily recognized -- complete, utter, unthinking insanity, the sort that had been left to fester and build for millennia, until it overflowed whatever mild constraints that had once kept it in check. The Cetra weren't even really the _Cetra _anymore, no longer a consciousness but instead one single mass of incoherent fear and obsession. Whatever the Ancients had once been was lost. Sephiroth suddenly wondered if he was the cause of all of this, before an eerie, quiet calm stole over him, the brief pause before the storm.

Strangely enough, he almost pitied them.

(The planet that's rightfully yours was taken away. You've been helpless for millennia, watching those who took it from you destroy it. They were all traitors, but because of Jenova, you were also powerless. Is that it? Is that what drove you mad?)

No response, of course. He didn't even think the Cetra heard him.

(...And now you want it back. I wonder... you're an itinerant race, traveling from one planet to the next, spreading your knowledge and wisdom... but is that really the truth of it? Humans were once Cetra. Do some of you stay behind and populate each planet until you destroy it? Are there hundreds and thousands of other nearly-dead planets filled with so-called traitors out there?)

Even if the Cetra heard, they weren't paying attention. A moment later Sephiroth bowled over, then felt an immense pressure in each of his limbs, building with each moment. Tendons snapping, muscles ripping, organs stretching and tearing apart --

_"You were reconstructed to use for our own purposes. We can deconstruct you at will."_

-- burning in each of his cells, followed by the pain of each cell bursting and sizzling away --

_"You don't have the power to refuse us."_

-- his head splitting open, mako pouring out of the tear, his vision fading and his ability to think fragmenting, bones splintering and scorched flesh melting --

_"Are your own convictions really so important? Temporal, fleeting beliefs and feelings aren't worth subjecting yourself to this, are they? You had to have known. Our desire is for humans to destroy themselves. What do you think that entails? Will a one-sided victory really achieve that goal? All humans are culpable. We do not distinguish among them. From this point onwards, you are merely a weapon to be used as we see fit."_

-- and he faced it all with both utter helplessness and complete awareness, even as the Cetra tore him into a million pieces. Incoherent, agonized screaming and senseless, terrible pain filled his entire universe.

It took Sephiroth an equally long time to realize he was back in his own body again and in one piece, now lying in a semi-fetal position on a dirty floor somewhere between a stack of materia-filled crates and the wall, in Junon's Military Base. For a while, he couldn't even move, suddenly frozen completely to the core, not even able to draw breath -- then he coughed, this time choking on an almost ridiculously large amount of pure, unfiltered mako that came out sizzling even if he felt cold, now.

Nothing was worse than the pain, but the understanding was nearly as bad -- the Cetra's insanity ran deeper than he could have imagined. He'd seen it before in glimpses, but now he understood it more fully -- absolute terror and mind-numbing despair fueled their insanity. The Cetra didn't just order him around and dog his steps -- they depended on him, the only person capable of relieving that terror.

(...I hope this plan of yours falls apart, and you end up suffering whatever horrible end you're trying to avoid.)

The Cetra remained silent, and Sephiroth realized that even in his mind, his own words sounded weak. Slowly, he got to his feet, exhaustion making his movements uncertain, dizzy again, and grimly aware that the Cetra had only shown him just a glimpse of what his demise was eventually going to be. For the first time, he wondered if the frozen feeling inside of him really was terror.

No, it wasn't terror. He wasn't capable of being scared, even when fear seemed like the most logical response. Sephiroth slowly moved back to his feet, expecting another onslaught. It didn't come, but he still felt them lurking at the edge of his mind, amidst the shadows and broken memories swirling around within, always threatening. And yet, somehow... the only ones truly terrified here were the Cetra, and Sephiroth was beginning to understand why. Plunging towards their own fate all the while, they were now willing to keep on destroying the Planet in some maniacal attempt to save it – and _that_ was the only route they were capable of taking.

**

* * *

**

Still raining, Rufus saw, as he passed through the corridors, tense and irritable, feeling disquieted by the fall of darkness over Junon and the sinking feeling that something lurked out there, ready to destroy each and every one of them with the kind of laughing strength and certainty of a bloodthirsty monster. Such thoughts were incredibly stupid, though. Rufus figured exhaustion was the main reason for his sudden paranoia, if not the only reason. The wind now blew so intensely it shook the very foundations of the Junon upper plate. That alone unnerved him just a little. Sometimes, he swore that against the Planet, the Lifestream, and every other mysterious force in the world, Shinra Inc. was only a frail facade constructed to mask mankind's very obvious weakness --

-- he needed coffee. Rufus's scowl deepened, and in his distraction, he almost ran into Reeve on the way back up to the main office. The other man looked stressed and pale.

"Mr. Vice President, have you--"

"--Heard? Yes. I did. I'd like a word with you," Rufus chose Reeve as his confidante, mostly because his own staff consisted primarily of buffoons appointed by his father. "Come with me."

The two of them climbed the stairs and then entered the ornate private office that had been Reeve's up until the morning. Rufus strode over to his desk and flipped on his monitor, before twisting it around for Reeve to read, his movements suddenly jerky and uncertain. Reeve leaned over, and his face gradually grew paler and paler as he absorbed more of the most recent Shinra internal memo, circulated around to a select few top-ranking officials.

"...How could that have happened?" Reeve finally asked.

"I have no idea," Rufus said flatly.

"...The Wutains--"

"It wasn't them."

"And Fort Condor--"

"It happened at about the same time they routed Heidegger's attack."

Reeve's face now seemed gray, and Rufus turned towards the window after a moment, pushing his hair out of his face and then folding his hands behind his back. "You probably don't know this, but we rebuilt the village and populated the place with Shinra people after the first time. Most of them were scientists, and a few were reactor technicians. It's such a small town, and it gets so few travelers... I don't think anyone would have even noticed."

"...Apparently someone did."

"We pissed off the wrong person," Rufus replied, evenly enough. "Look at the attached pictures. They're really something."

Reeve drew in his breath sharply, and Rufus knew what he'd seen. A single Shinra helicopter had flown over the area and transmitted the pictures just before crashing into the mountains, probably shot down, maybe even torn right out of the sky. All of the pictures were somewhat nondescript, but the context made all the difference.

A pile of ashes, scattered a bit by wind and obscured a little by freshly fallen stone. The occasional skeletal remain of a building frame. Empty foundations where there had once been homes. The biggest pile of ruins and ashes sat on a hill overlooking the rest, visible in one blurry photograph. But the most appallingly unlikely photo was the last in the set, a clear view of the side of a mountain and a deep gash cutting into a peak, like a crater that had seemingly grown out of nowhere. Wreckage scattered the area, and the glow of mako emanated from the core, like the crater was really an open wound in the planet's skin. Where that crater was now, had once been Shinra's Mt. Nibel Mako Reactor. The town below, Nibelheim, a dreary, poor little mountain hamlet, was now a pile of ashes. Even the old Shinra Mansion, untouched by the last fire, remained only as a skeletal frame. Somehow, it hearkened back to what Rufus remembered of the first images to emerge from Gongaga, only different. There, the reactor had simply exploded in one large fireball and toasted the town. This time, it was more like the reactor had just been brutally ripped from the earth around it.

Reeve stood staring at the monitor for a while, and he surprised Rufus by coming up with something rational to say. "There's a person in one of these photographs. You can barely see him."

"Yes. We've got some people working, trying to refine the image a little."

One of the photos of the town had a single figure standing in the middle of it, probably a good twenty feet below the helicopter. The single figure seemed almost like a phantom, but it looked like they had a head of light hair, and some kind of large sword in hand. Only one picture of the figure existed. Just after taking that single photo and transmitting it, the helicopter had mysteriously crashed, with all communications cut.

"...This is not good," Reeve finally said. "It's clearly an anti-Shinra action..."

"I wonder," Rufus murmured.

"--And if the Rebels have something that can do _this--"_

"Even my father will see that we're in trouble."

For a few minutes, the two of them were silent. Finally, Reeve straightened up with a sigh.

"It'll get on the phone and get some extra SOLDIERs in here. Not that it'll do any good, but... we've got a reactor too."

"Yes." Rufus said, mechanically, and Reeve stormed out of the room, letting the door shut as he went. After a while, Rufus' monitor flicked off, leaving the office in near complete darkness but for the city lights from Junon below, flickering through the rain and constant wind. Rufus watched water hit the windows and trickle down, hollowly, feeling bitter, tired, even sardonically and darkly amused. Oh, they'd done it -- Shinra Inc. had pissed off something out there that was more than they could handle, and now they were feeling the repercussions. He knew one thing -- something capable of ripping a reactor right out of the ground wouldn't have any problem with the defenses Shinra had now. That might have been the attacker's intended message, actually.

"...We'll all be dead in a week." Rufus spoke aloud to the empty room, and the empty room responded.

"You shouldn't worry."

Rufus, unlike his father, kept his reflexes sharp enough to hold his own in a fight -- as long as his opponent was human. He whirled around, drawing his gun and pointing it in the direction of the voice and squeezing the trigger --

-- only the trigger failed to be there, and he looked at his hand stupidly before slowly raising his head, staring through the shadows. Sitting on his desk like it'd been there all along was some kind of monster, casually holding Rufus's gun and looking at him with a pale, mostly-human face, immensely bright glowing eyes fixing him to the spot. Rufus just stood, his hand still outstretched, suddenly unable to breathe.

"All Shinra really needs is an effective weapon," it said, while Rufus stared. "Maybe you won't win. Something as powerful as what _they _have will only mean mutually-assured destruction for both sides. But that might be the best possible outcome for everyone."

Hojo, Rufus realized. Hojo was the one making all of these human-like monsters, and given how insane the scientist was now, it was no real surprise that his creations were now gradually starting to flip out and do ridiculous things. This creature looked at him with cat-like mako-green eyes, filled with a mix of malice and plain old-fashioned crazy, but somehow Rufus managed to swallow his gorge enough to speak.

"What are you?"

It smiled, and somehow that made it even more terrifying. "I'm just a weapon."

Silence, except for the beating rain. Rufus stared through the dark, his eyes finally adjusting and making the creature sitting on his desk less a monster and more human, even if the unwavering mako glare in his eyes was impossibly inhuman in many, many ways. Taking a step backwards, Rufus sought out the panic button underneath his desk and compressed it, facing the intruder all the while with forced composure.

"...A weapon? What do you mean?"

"You want this company for yourself, don't you?" The intruder asked, and Rufus couldn't help but admit it piqued his interest just a little. Too late -- three SOLDIER second-classes and one first class entered the room in a flash, spotting the intruder instantly and drawing their weapons in a flash. All the while, the man sat on Rufus's desk and looked at him with mako eyes -- before silence fell again, interrupted only by the quick sounds of blood hitting the ground and walls. Seconds later, before Rufus' mind even pieced together what he'd seen, the bodies of the three Seconds and the single First hit the ground, their weapons noisily clattering to the floor next to them. The intruder sat on the edge of Rufus' desk again, his arms crossed, his sword now pinning one of the bodies to the wall in a grisly warning.

For a long moment, Rufus faced this monster, thinking perhaps this was it -- his father had finally succumbed to paranoia and sent an assassin to take his own son down. It had his father's needlessly wasteful and overblown touch written all over it -- armed or not, Rufus knew he wasn't nearly this hard to kill. It didn't require some mako-poisoned inhuman horror to take him out. It would have been easy work even for the most incompetent Shinra Trooper.

But the sudden feeling of a sword through his insides didn't come. Rufus stood for a long time, before finally cocking his head a little, almost growing impatient. "...I suppose my old man sent you, right? Well, I'll confess. It's not like I'm planning to take the company away this moment, but I have looked into it. I figured I'd just wait until he dies -- the company would be mine, anyway -- but you know, why not? If you're here to kill me, I may as well admit that I've hired spies, assassins -- they all failed -- and funded anti-Shinra terrorist cells just to try to wear my father down."

"I wasn't sent by the President. But do you know why I haven't killed you yet?"

Frozen to the spot even as he tried to regain his composure and suddenly looking down the sharp end of a very long katana, Rufus lingered silently, wondering if this was one kind of test. Finally, he lifted his eyes from the sword by pure force of will and looked at the intruder.

"Because you don't want to."

"...You're right." The man lowered the sword, and oddly enough, Rufus felt too numb to be terrified. "What do you think you'd need to take this company over?"

The two of them looked at one another, Rufus staring at the other's pale face and wondering if maybe he was just imagining all of this, and the other completely inscrutable, his face now blank and cold, lacking even the slightest hint of an expression. An especially strong gust of wind battered the window, breaking Rufus out of what felt like an almost hypnotic trance, and he managed to speak with a mouth that suddenly felt stuffed with cotton.

"...I'd need a stronger weapon, wouldn't I?"

The intruder smiled again, a fleeting ghost of an expression that didn't belie the coldness in his eyes, and suddenly Rufus understood just what was being offered.

**author's notes:**

1. 7,500 words. I wanted to do another double-post this week, since plot points that appeared in this chapter become much more obvious in the next chapter, but unfortunately, c12's not quite finished. So…

2. …Next week: Sephiroth and Rufus, Aerith and the Cetra, and a visit with Vincent. As usual, thanks for all of the reviews for last chapter and earlier chapters.


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter Twelve**

The improbable feeling of something cold brushing his skin drew him out of a long, dark sleep filled with tortured nightmares, though as soon as he opened his eyes he couldn't be certain whether he was still dreaming or not. Light snow fell from a black sky, intermingled with ashes. The heavy, charred smell of burning air and wood surrounded him, almost choking him with its intensity after such a long time of feeling _nothing_.

Sensations and recognition began to return to him. Slowly, he sat up, feeling the familiar heaviness on his left shoulder and the cold and the deep chill against him -- the metallic, claw-like contraption where his left arm had once been weighed down his body, but there was something else making him feel unusually sluggish, blurring his vision and dulling his senses. Maybe numbness was a relief. This shocking amount of stimuli after such a long time spent asleep might have sent him into sensory overload were it not dulled by something. After a moment, he reached up with his right hand, gingerly examining a swiftly-healing wound on his forehead.

"Sorry. I didn't want you waking up before."

His senses were so dull he hadn't even noticed another presence. Sitting about ten feet away on some overturned wreckage, the remains of what had probably once been some kind of helicopter transport, a pale-faced young man with yellow-blond hair and intensely bright glowing blue eyes sat looking at him, expressionlessly.

"'Course, maybe you didn't want to wake up at all. I could understand that. It's hard, sometimes..." His voice wasn't threatening at all, just quiet and bland, belying the intense glare of mako in his eyes and the reality of the immense white sword propped behind him, sticking out of the ruins of what now looked like a helicopter.

"Who are you?" Vincent finally asked, then looked around, studying his surroundings. It took a moment for the fuzzy images to come together into something recognizable, but none of it made any sense. Calmly, though cold and with sinuses filled by the heavy, acrid scent of burning, Vincent looked back at the man sitting atop the wreckage. "Is this... Nibelheim?"

"...Not anymore." Slowly and fluidly, his movements easy and graceful, the young man with the mako eyes rose to his feet and turned, facing the land around them. He seemed to know that Vincent was having trouble coming back to awareness, so the other man made no sudden moves -- and kept away from his sword, which still stuck upright from the ground a few feet away. Vincent supposed the other's intent was not to appear like an enemy, though the unnerving nature of their surroundings created a sinking unease that Vincent couldn't shake.

The smell of mako hung in the air, too. Shinra's first rural mako reactor sat in the mountains above, between three jagged peaks. Vincent got to his feet unsteadily and turned to look up the mountainside, but a thick layer of clouds obscured his view. "Did the reactor explode?"

"...You could say that."

Vincent looked back towards the man, studying him again. His uniform looked Shinra -- some variant on the company's elite forces outfit, similar to what some of the expert combat operatives wore. It was old and ragged, though, patched together in places and a little ill-fitting -- the pants were too baggy, and the shirt hung a little off the young man's frame, like the outfit was either someone else's or its wearer had recently lost a fair amount of weight. "Are you with Shinra? Do you work for Hojo?"

"No. I'm one of Hojo's experiments, though. Just like you." The man finally turned around, looking at Vincent with those odd-glaring eyes of his, still expressionless, his voice quiet -- almost bitter. "Guess I'm a failure, though... in more ways than one. But as far as I know, you're the real deal... right, Vincent?"

Vincent looked at the man, suddenly thinking back to his Turk Training, and the common sense lesson -- if someone knew more about you than you knew about them, they were automatically classified as dangerous. They were even more dangerous if they were very aware that they possessed the better intelligence, so Vincent remained unfazed and kept on studying the other man, intently.

"Were you the one who burned Nibelheim down?" Vincent asked, almost conversationally -- suspecting the other mostly because their surroundings were a complete void of anyone else living, and also keeping in mind what the glow in the other man's eyes meant. Hojo had done all kinds of experiments with the idea of injecting mako into human beings, and while most ended in disaster, glowing eyes was a common indicator of mako poisoning.

Surprisingly, the man looked at him for a moment, before a hint of a bitter, sardonic smile crossed over his face and vanished within seconds. "... It's almost funny. After watching it burn three times, I hardly feel anything at all. The first was always the hardest. When _he _did it. The second..." The man stopped rather abruptly, before shaking his head. "Guess it doesn't matter."

Vincent remained silent for a moment, straining to find something he could grasp onto -- a half-buried memory of a man like this, maybe, some kind of blurry recollection that could help put things into perspective. He couldn't find it. As far as his memories told him, he didn't know this man at all.

"...Do you know what year it is, Vincent?"

Saying his name a lot, as if taunting him -- but there was no enjoyment or satisfaction in the other's voice. He still sounded quiet and bitter as before, not at all like someone who knew something crucial another didn't and reveled in it.

"...I don't. I slept for a long time."

"Thirty. It's been thirty years since Hojo altered your body and locked you in the basement," The young man said, flatly. "It happened right after Sephiroth was born, didn't it?"

"Sephiroth? You--" That took Vincent off-guard, somehow, but the other turned, now giving him another bitter little smile.

"--know Sephiroth? Yeah."

"Then do you know--"

"--A woman named Lucrecia? No. But if she was injected with Jenova cells like her son, she's probably still alive somewhere. They don't die so easily."

Vincent decided, and not a moment too soon, that there was something deeply wrong with this situation. "So you were the one who--"

"--I knew you were down there... At first I didn't even think of it... it's like I forgot you even existed. And then I actually thought about just leaving you there, thinking it didn't really matter... you're probably going to want to sleep through all of this. Whatever's happening next isn't going to be pretty. Yes...Whatever _they're_ doing is going to be very, very ugly for everyone involved. They've lost their minds. All of them."

It was almost like watching someone caught in a fever -- the young man sounded angry and intense one moment, then flat and expressionless the next, and his eyes burned all the while, almost painfully bright to look at. His words, half-nonsense and half things he had no way of knowing, came out either in a jumbled rush or with a bland, sardonic edge, like he was on the verge of painfully fake laughter all the while.

"...But then... I figured maybe you'd be the only one to get it... Tifa and Barrett would just think I'm crazy. I don't know where the rest are, and I don't trust them anyway. Things are different, here... and I don't think I can get to Aerith, either."

Vincent knew none of those names, and didn't expect to, either. Now half-convinced he was listening to the ramblings of a mad-man and yet curious, all the same, Vincent decided to play this with caution and start from the very beginning. "How much do you know about me?"

"...Not a lot. You loved Lucrecia, but she didn't love you back, I guess. Or maybe she didn't know, because... you never said anything. You certainly didn't do anything to stop her from letting herself be used as Hojo's guinea pig... you only acted when it was too late." His words didn't sound angry, but Vincent took the accusation in stride, nodding slightly.

"It's true."

Now the first hint of something other than a bitter smile passed over the other man's face, a bit of surprise, perhaps because even with these ugly truths in the air between them, Vincent didn't bother getting angry or denying them. The man in the old Shinra uniform knew about Vincent, but it didn't seem like they'd ever known one another. Then again, maybe Vincent had known this man a long time ago -- and forgotten. It was impossible to say, and not worth pondering until full alertness returned. For now Vincent stuck with his Turk instincts, resolved to stand calmly and wait for things to become clearer.

It didn't seem like that was going to happen any time soon.

"...Hojo shot you, altered your body, and locked you in the basement... kept you in a mako tube for a while, I guess, before putting you in a coffin and locking the door. You were in some kind of suspended sleep... but all the while, you could have escaped, if you'd wanted. But you didn't. Seems like being stuck in your dreams is better than the real world." Again, another bitter, sardonic smile crossed the man's face. "Especially when the entire world stops making sense..."

"Do you know what happened to Sephiroth?"

"He died when he was seven. He also lived to become the greatest SOLDIER alive. I don't know. One or the other." Carelessly, the other shrugged -- but Vincent could see how troubled he was, how worries seemed to be weighing him down and multiplying beyond his own control. Yet the contradiction in his words meant something significant, the key to what was going on here. Vincent cocked his head a little, moving for the first time in several minutes.

"Perhaps you can explain this to me, then."

He shrugged. "...I'm the wrong person to be explaining things. I'm more confused than anyone."

"What's your name?" Vincent asked abruptly, not expecting to get an answer and yet thinking maybe he could catch the other man off-guard. Somehow, though, a set of glaring blue eyes turned to him, still flat and bitter and yet almost expectant.

"Cloud Strife. SOLDIER first class." Cloud smiled wanly. "I wish. You know what's strange? I still failed. Even knowing all the things I knew before, and even with all that knowledge that should have given me an advantage over the others... I failed miserably."

The name meant nothing to him, and Cloud's ramblings meant even less -- but Vincent didn't react to either one way or the other. Cloud kept a close eye on him, seemingly looking for something --a sign, words, maybe even recognition. Vincent gave him nothing, and the other man turned away after a moment with a slight sigh.

"I keep on thinking maybe -- no. Never mind."

"Is there something you wanted to say?"

"Yeah. You, me, five other people, a talking lion, and one robotic cat... we banded together and saved the world from Sephiroth, once. He went insane, burned down Nibelheim the first time, then summoned Meteor... I helped him do that, of course. I screwed up a lot of things... but somehow, we managed to stop him. We stopped Hojo, too, and Jenova... but Aerith still died. So did Zack, even before her. But... that was something else. Now everything's different... _They're_ different. I can hear them, sometimes, all together... but I don't know what they're planning. I think they're all insane. I think maybe I'm insane, actually. Maybe it was all just a dream." Cloud smiled wanly, then shook his head. "I mean... A robotic cat? Really? Doesn't that all sound insane to you?"

Vincent looked at him levelly, listening to Cloud's forcibly calm recitation and wondering if perhaps he _was_ insane -- that seemed to be a common side-effect of mako exposure -- and yet with a growing, prickling unease, thinking perhaps something about the words coming from Cloud's mouth sparked a kernel of recognition in his own mind. Yet under rational analysis it all seemed like nonsense, and perhaps Cloud's calm appeared forced only because he, too, was trying to approach whatever was inside of his head in a rational manner.

"When did all of this happen?"

_"Now." _Cloud's bitter smile darkened, now, fading in a matter of seconds. "In fact... this was the day we won. We went to the bottom of the Northern Crater, and killed Sephiroth. But... it _never _happened."

"...And what if it did?"

Cloud narrowed his eyes, then looked back at Vincent, suddenly calm again. "...I appreciated it, you know. Sometimes I thought you didn't give a shit about any of us, really, but... you came back with all the rest. And you were always open to the most insane things imaginable. Even if you didn't want to, I think you understood."

Hearing such jaded and almost bitter gratitude from a man he didn't even know was just one surreal experience among many, but what struck Vincent was that Cloud sounded strangely honest about all of this -- speaking like he either had nothing to lose or was desperate to tell someone, even if it cost him in the long run. For a while they were silent, standing in the falling ash and snow and surrounded by a rising, bitterly cold wind. Vincent caught another strong gust of metallic mako smell and almost cringed at its dizzying intensity, but Cloud was unaffected even if his eyes seemed to be glowing a little brighter, now.

"They're angry. I wonder what they're planning?" Cloud's muttering seemed to come from a great distance, and even with Vincent's enhanced senses -- he saw and heard things with almost too much clarity, now -- the words were barely discernible over the rising wind and the distant, growing thrum of helicopters. "They're raging mad, but they're still weak. Not as weak as they were, though. Do you hear that?"

Cloud asked so suddenly it took Vincent off-guard.

"You mean the helicopters?"

"No. The Planet. It's screaming. Completely terrified. Shinra is coming again, though. You should probably get out of here, unless you want this one pinned on you. I don't think you need any more baggage. Or do you want to go back to sleep?" Cloud looked at Vincent, now seriously expecting an answer -- and Vincent actually considered it, wondering if sleep would even come with all of this new knowledge, with Cloud's confused words tumbling through his head and thoughts of Lucrecia, Sephiroth, Hojo, and Jenova now lurking around the edge of his thoughts, mere ghosts of all the nightmares that had haunted him through his long sleep.

"...After this, I doubt I'd be able to sleep again."

"...Tell me about it." Cloud muttered, and then lifted his enormous white sword from the ground, his movements still fluid and easy. The blade definitely outweighed Cloud, though he sheathed it on his back like it was nothing and turned back to Vincent, anger now written all over his face, replacing confusion and forced blankness. "This is a message for _him_, as much as it is for Shinra."

"...Him?"

"Sephiroth," Cloud offered the name and didn't explain anything. "Like I said, you should probably get out of here. Go away and bury your head somewhere, or find a place to sleep. There's a cave behind a waterfall, a few miles east of this place. It's the kind of quiet place no one goes, unless they're looking for a place to die. Or sleep forever. Something like that. Things are just going to get uglier, so you may as well run when you can." Cloud began walking, purposefully like he was on a mission, leaving Vincent standing and staring after him in nearly open consternation, trying and failing to comprehend all that was going on here.

Uncertainty, confusion, and exhaustion even despite his long sleep reared up briefly, leaving him unable to act -- the same inability to act, in fact, that had precipitated his downfall and Lucrecia's eventual demise, and had ensured that Hojo's insanity could continue on unchecked and unhindered. Now it was plain that there were more victims to his insanity. Vincent was just the prototype. Sephiroth and Lucrecia, and now this strange, confused young man with the burning eyes -- Cloud Strife. No, sleeping wasn't an option any more than burying his head, and Vincent knew now that he had already slept far too long.

"Cloud. Wait--"

Too late. Vincent didn't really know exactly what else there was to be said, because even if his thoughts nearly overflowed with millions of unanswered questions, Cloud didn't seem too intent on answering them. But the SOLDIER was gone, vanished with barely a trace into the snow and ash, and with him, his knowledge of a situation Vincent couldn't even begin to understand. Shinra helicopters drummed closer, probably to investigate the scene. Vincent already knew finding Cloud again wasn't going to be possible unless the other wanted to be found, so he didn't bother looking. Instead, Vincent lingered for just a moment -- peering across the ashen, broken remains of Nibelheim and coming to the conclusion, almost out of nowhere, that perhaps the entire world had driven itself insane while he slept. Cloud was right about one thing, though -- it was time to move. Vincent forced the last remaining sluggishness away from his senses and decided to head south, resisting the futile impulse to search for Cloud and yet resolved to find answers to the million questions now burning inside of his mind.

**

* * *

**

Sephiroth could do little to hide his irritation, and for once, the Cetra agreed with him. Sitting in a chair in the boardroom, his arms folded across his chest and his expression now taciturn, he listened to bickering all around him, equally unimpressed by both sides. It was the usual inane negotiations, only this time Sephiroth deigned to have someone else speaking his part for him.

The younger Shinra might have been as much of a dithering buffoon as his father, but Rufus had the far better understanding of the situation, meaning he was among the few Shinra executives possessed of more than a rudimentary intelligence. That wasn't the case with Heidegger, Scarlett, Palmer, and the usual suspects. Blind to the slow catastrophe enveloping the company, they sat and spat insults back and forth, while Rufus tried with considerable vehemence to convince the rest. Reeve, the former head of Urban Development in Midgar -- a man Sephiroth had never looked twice at in his timeline -- seemed to be the only one listening to Rufus's argument with anything approaching seriousness. The rest had their doubts.

Heidegger didn't want to relinquish either power or his paycheck, and Sephiroth already knew he'd made one incompetent-yet-mortal enemy. The General was even rounder than Sephiroth remembered, now shaped something like a beach ball and with a tomato-red face under a thick bristle of a black beard. He practically seethed with anger every time he looked at Sephiroth.

Scarlett and Palmer were some of the President's staunchest lackeys, and averse to any kind of shift in power, fearing anything perceived as a threat to their own departmental budget -- or maybe their positions. And the President Shinra himself was the same man that Sephiroth remembered, criminally lacking in self-awareness, prone to bouts of paranoia and suspicion but never aware of danger before it struck, and almost incapable of using his money in a useful manner.

Shinra Inc. was nothing more than a parade of idiots.

Still, Sephiroth sat patiently the entire time, listening to Rufus argue on his behalf, trying to work out some kind of deal. In a way, it wasn't just the usual Shinra phobia towards competent people that kept them from relenting -- Sephiroth knew his own relative lack of presence in this world was mostly at fault, here. No one in the company was going to simply open up their wallets and resources to a virtual unknown, some odd SOLDIER presumed dead as a child and now reappearing with almost nothing to his name except one very long sword. Convincing the half-witted board of executives that he even had an identity in the first place was the initial battle, actually hindered by the fact that Hojo wasn't anywhere around.

In what Sephiroth liked to think of as a fortunate-yet-inconveniencing series of events, Hojo had left the continent to go work on some other project of his, and was now a good two-thousand miles to the west. Sephiroth didn't mind -- he didn't relish the prospect of meeting the old rat-bastard of a scientist again, particularly when he knew that the Cetra wanted Hojo alive for one very obvious reason. Even if he used the Lifestream to do it, his creations were the best agents of complete destruction on the surface of the Planet.

Sephiroth also didn't like the questions that were sure to emerge, or the conclusions about to be drawn. No one else in the world remembered much about him -- though President Shinra had a dim recollection of having met the science department's most expensive failure of a project -- except perhaps Hojo, who would surely see his face and know right away that Sephiroth was undoubtedly one of his experiments. Sephiroth didn't really want to know what Hojo was going to think about all of this.

The second big argument was the more relevant one. Rufus knew how to pitch an idea, at least -- framing it in terms of the millions of lives and gil Shinra was about to lose, bluntly assessing their situation with little sympathy for the incompetence of its main players, and then presenting the solution as the only option for Shinra's continued existence.

Sephiroth was the solution. But convincing Shinra to let him into the fold, and give him even the smallest token of authority was a long, up-hill battle. Rufus knew how to use fear as a motivator, but not all in the room were willing to take an essentially blind leap of faith like he was, placing their bets on someone who only looked menacing but hadn't yet proven a thing.

The worst part was that Sephiroth knew he couldn't achieve what the Cetra wanted without Shinra, just like Shinra couldn't ensure its own continued existence without him. The hive mind currently chattering away in his head and hissing excited warnings wanted their war to be a long, bloody conflict of attrition, not just the one-sided assault it'd been up until this point. The prospect of such a war didn't faze Sephiroth. The idea that the Cetra wanted him to fight on Shinra's side meant little except that he had to simply accept it and fulfill their wishes without thinking too much, without bothering to consider all of the frail connections he was about to crush.

And yet even as the collection of Shinra idiots around him argued with almost cloying self-importance about his fate, Sephiroth knew his real concern, right now, had to be Cloud Strife. The message burned into the mountainside where the open wound that had once been Shinra's first rural mako reactor was an indelible and undeniable warning to everyone involved in this mess. The Shinra had taken note with horror. The Cetra, too, had taken note -- with deep, unshakeable satisfaction. Cloud might have thought he was a rogue agent in all of this, but his understanding of the situation wasn't deep enough, not yet.

Such an insane act of carnage had only served to heighten Shinra's fears enough to actually consider letting an unknown SOLDIER with no military ID or background lead one of their armies. Cloud's actions, sickeningly and pathetically enough, had played right into the Cetra's ulterior motives even if they didn't have an ounce of control over him. At the same time, though, Cloud was a threat -- maybe the only real threat, now that the Cetra's plans were proceeding so smoothly. If he started tearing down more reactors, Shinra resources and power would rapidly diminish, ensuring a one-sided victory for the Rebels and the Wutains. Maybe that was the plan -- Sephiroth thought perhaps Cloud knew, in some way, that the Cetra were about to use Shinra as one side in their suddenly high-stakes game of chess, and destroying Shinra swiftly was the best method of rapidly derailing the Cetra's plan. If that was really Cloud's intent, perhaps it meant Nibelheim was as much a message for Sephiroth as it was for the Cetra -- an open, unveiled threat delivered right from the hand of perhaps the one person capable of hindering their plans.

_"Cloud Strife is pitifully and pathetically mortal, with a mortal's understanding of the flow of time."_ The Cetra murmured, suddenly. Knowing the argument between Rufus and the other Shinra executives wasn't getting anywhere for a while, Sephiroth blocked them out and considered the Cetra's words.

(You're ridiculously arrogant, like usual. He's not under your control, is he? You wish he was, but he's not. He's free to do whatever he wants, and his actions are something you can't predict. Cloud terrifies you.)

_"Not as long as we have you to counter him."_

(So that's it? But what if I'm not capable of doing that?)

_"You'll have to suffice. Both you and Strife have certain roles to play in all of this."_

(And my role is--)

_"You're nothing more than a puppet. You already know that any concept you have of free will is just an illusion cast by the shadows within your mind."_

Sephiroth remained impassive as an intense, stabbing pain went through the center of his head, now looking across the board room without really seeing anything except acidic green. The green vanished, but dizziness remained, and this time he could almost feel the lurking shadows emerging from the recesses of his mind, threatening to overwhelm him. He forced it all back under control.

(Fine, then_._ But if I'm merely your puppet, I'll still do _this_ my way.)

He wanted to say the same thing to Rufus, actually, but decided it could wait. Letting the young Shinra presume Sephiroth would just go along with the plan they'd hatched in Junon had brought them here to Midgar so far. It seemed simple. Rufus would convince the board of directors to give Sephiroth an army. Sephiroth planned on winning a few victories against the rebels, then throwing a coup with Rufus and taking the company over. It wasn't even a bad plan, really – just not very direct. Sephiroth no longer had the patience to wait.

_"If you act rashly, you'll end up--"_

(If I sit around and kill time, Cloud will rip every reactor out of the Planet before anything can be done.) The Cetra fell silent, but sent a barb through his mind, a subtle warning. This time the dizziness almost blocked the pain out completely, though he suppressed the urge to reflexively cough out mako, hoping his insides could cooperate, just for now.

When the pain faded away, Sephiroth looked directly at President Shinra. The old man gazed at him suspiciously all the while, as Heidegger and Rufus argued about something meaningless.

"Do you remember the first incident in Nibelheim, Mr. President?" Sephiroth asked, so suddenly that the entire room fell silent. The President looked at him with beady eyes set in a round bearded face, suspicious to the point of paranoia and yet still supremely confident, an odd combination. Sephiroth, more so than even Rufus, knew the truth of what lied within the President's mind -- complete and utter madness, only slightly less insidious than the kind sported by Professor Hojo.

"I do. We lost that Ancient, and the town burned down." The President grunted, and Sephiroth nodded.

"Yes. Do you have surveillance videos of that incident? You must." He smiled, slightly. "I'm the one who broke into the lab that night."

Rufus narrowed his eyes -- this hadn't been part of their plan. The President cocked his head, irritably, and Heidegger turned an intense shade of red again, while a few of the executives in the room began murmuring amongst themselves, uncertainly.

"Then you've committed an act of treason, and should be executed." President Shinra said, his face slowly reddening.

"Executed? Maybe. But I think you're considering it from the wrong angle, Mr. President. I didn't have a problem breaking Shinra resistance to pieces back then. I don't have a problem with it now, either. Do you know what's keeping me from killing you right now, sir?"

The answer to that seemed simple. "You have four guns trained on you from several points in the room. If you so much as move, you'll--"

Sephiroth appreciated the very moment when President Shinra's confidence and complacency faded, disappearing in the blink of an eye and supplanted by confusion, than outrage, then something else – slack-jawed mind-breaking terror the sort the man probably hadn't felt in a very, very long time. President Shinra now stared along the edge of the Masamune, his mouth working soundlessly before he managed to bark out a command.

"Shoot him!"

"Don't shoot," Sephiroth said, quickly, from where he now stood behind the President's chair, holding the blade across his throat. "Unless you want his head to roll. Or... maybe some of you do? Thinking of taking the company for yourselves?"

Every eye in the room stared at Sephiroth, appalled -- and when Sephiroth looked at Rufus he watched the other's face turn completely white. This wasn't part of the plan, either, but Sephiroth knew what he was doing. In the corner, a man in a blue-suit -- one of the Turks, Sephiroth knew -- began to move to his feet with an impassive expression, but he looked towards the man, sharply.

"Don't move a muscle, Tseng, or his head rolls. You're not nearly fast enough to prevent that. Don't even try. Don't push the panic button either, Heidegger, or your head's going to roll next. And I'd put that gun back in its holster, Scarlett," Sephiroth said, watching each face he named turn the same shade of pasty gray as the President's. "I really don't think any of you want to antagonize me. And to be honest, I'm not here to make enemies out of you, either."

"If you so much as harm as hair on my head, the entire army will--" The President began, but Sephiroth only smirked.

"--not be able to reattach your head to its body. So, I'm going to ask you again. Do you know what keeps me from killing you right now, Mr. President?"

The President's mouth worked soundlessly for a few moments, but arrogance so immense it almost seemed criminal overcame any of the man's better instincts. "You would never--"

"Wrong answer." Sephiroth slew him with a single thrust.

In the immediate aftermath, he grudgingly admitted that Rufus possessed a little more sense than his father, especially when things didn't go according to plan. The President slumped over and fell sideways, toppling onto the ground. Someone screamed. Someone else burst into tears. A man vomited. Palmer fell right out of his seat and went running for the exit. Heidegger jerked back so roughly he nearly fell over, too, and the rest just stared, most gaping stupidly. Finally, one of the President's bodyguards sprang towards Sephiroth a good thirty seconds too late to protect the body, only to be easily tossed aside -- and Rufus stood up suddenly.

"Well, looks like the old man's dead. What a shame." A few steps, and Rufus stood at the head of the table, looking down at his father for a moment -- disgust flashing over his face, and a kind of half-hearted regret. "Too bad it had to turn out this way, anyway."

Everyone else in the room just stared, too frozen to react. Sephiroth turned and looked at Rufus, and the younger Shinra, displaying more common sense in one moment than his father had in his entire lifetime, actually hesitated. Both of them stood over the vacated chair where the President had been sitting less than a minute earlier, and Rufus possessed enough self-awareness to realize Sephiroth could have sat down in it if he wanted to -- and the Cetra waited, too, curious, even amused -- before Sephiroth turned. He kicked Heidegger out of his seat at the right of the President's chair almost casually, slow enough to remind everyone in the room that none of them had ever seen him move in the first place -- and the General scuttled away like a terrified insect. Rufus watched impassively, smiled a little, then sat down in his father's chair.

"Call in the guards and paramedics. Tell them to bring a body bag. Also, someone deliver the news to my mother. Try to be nice about it, though. She knows about his dozens of trysts at the Honeybee, but I think she's still got some kind of feelings for him. Let the media know, too. Say he died of a heart attack. It's probably close enough to the truth." Rufus leaned forth in his seat, folding hands beneath his chin and leaning on them, almost looking bored -- if a little pale, and obviously trying not to look at his father's corpse even if it didn't mean much to him. No one else moved, as the mood of the room shifted from utterly appalled silence to disbelief -- before finally Tseng, the leader of the Turks, rose to his feet with the same unequivocal look he'd worn the entire meeting. He and the Turks silently departed, off to do just as Rufus had said. They didn't really care who was in charge. Gaining confidence, Rufus continued right on.

"Heidegger. The first act of my new administration will be to remove you from your position. You can go work in the weapons development department with Scarlett, although I'm cutting your funding back by half until you come to me with some kind of plan that'll actually have a chance of being remotely useful to us. That's my second act. Thirdly..." Rufus cocked his head a little. "Sephiroth is taking Heidegger's place as General of Shinra's armies. Spread the word around, send a briefing to the other officers -- though after our last defeat, I don't think anyone's going to care."

"This is preposterous," Heidegger spluttered from the ground. Rufus ignored him.

"Finally, I'd like the first class SOLDIERs to assemble in the training grounds. We're going to do some reorganization. It's high time, don't you think? We've been embarrassed enough by ragtag groups of idiot insurgents, both in Fort Condor and Cosmo Canyon. It's time to change things. You're all dismissed."

The others couldn't get out of the room fast enough, even with stumbling, kicking, and shoving. As soon as they were gone Rufus got to his feet, still pale but satisfied looking, while Sephiroth removed his sword from where he'd left it in President Shinra. He flicked the blood on the blade away, splattering Rufus with some of it and not really caring. The other paused, cringing a little, but he regained his composure swiftly.

"You didn't go with the plan."

"...This was easier, don't you think?"

Rufus shrugged, a slow smile of complete satisfaction creeping across his usually taciturn features. "I didn't say I wasn't pleased with the results... but for a moment I really thought you were going to take the company for yourself."

"...What would I do with this mess?"

"I'm wondering the same thing. So, what are you going to do now?"

Sephiroth gave Rufus a bland look. "I'm taking your army to Fort Condor back, for starters. Then I'll deal with the Wutains on the other continent. I'll secure your empire for you."

While slowly draining it away, all the while -- or maybe just bashing it to pieces, while the Cetra watched and enjoyed themselves, intoxicated with sadistic glee. Right now, they were laughing, exhilarated to see how smoothly their plan was preceding and totally blind to the irony of using both Sephiroth _and_ Shinra to fulfill their insane plans. Maybe they weren't blind to it, actually -- Sephiroth thought that perhaps they just didn't care, so long as the lives of the traitors came to an end.

**

* * *

**

"You're scared, aren't you?"

Aerith knelt down in the darkness, near where a small fountain of glitteringly pure Lifestream energy emerged, unbidden, from the corner of the tiny yard. Nearly twenty feet away, two Shinra guards stood with blank expressions on their face, guarding the exit, but they were out of earshot, not really paying attention to her, luckily. Giving them a glance, then turning back to the glittering bubble of Lifestream, Aerith went to her knees, feigning the action of working the soil while secretly listening, feeling the warm thrum of the Planet's life energy as it wrapped around her mind. The Planet couldn't form words, but it still spoke as if painting in broad strokes, forming pictures in her mind.

It wasn't pleasant. Terror, anger, distress, confusion, and agony above all else crept around the edges of the Planet's warmth, a desperate cry left curiously unheeded. A moment later, it was gone -- replaced in her mind with something else, a distant whisper that seemed to come from a very long way away.

_"Are you scared?"_

She knew that whisper even if it was muted, kept at a distance by some invisible force. "You're..."

_"The consciousness of the ancients, yes."_

"Then... can you tell me... what's going on? Why is the Planet so scared?"

_"Do not worry, child."_ The voice was gentle, reassuring, full of warmth and life just like the voice of the Planet. They were fond of her, welcoming -- though she still felt the almost visceral rawness in it, tangible even amidst the gentle murmuring. _"The Planet fears that it is dying, but we are its protectors."_

"Is there anything I can do?"

_"Again, there is no need to worry. You mustn't endanger yourself on our behalf."_

The small bubble of Lifestream twisted gently and rose towards her, and she stretched her hand out, letting its frail strands circle it and admiring its beautiful, peaceful tranquility. Even if the Planet was scared, it still tried its best to reach out to her as much as it could, and Aerith found it completely heartening, almost touching. Her confidence grew a little, and she mentally prepared for what came next.

"I can tell you're concentrating on something," Aerith murmured. "I... didn't understand it at first... But it's becoming clearer. We Cetra are only guardians, aren't we?"

No response, but the warmth faded immediately. Something strange and cold replaced it, a feeling very similar to apprehension. Undaunted, Aerith continued.

"When I spoke out before... it was because it seemed like you were torturing someone. It also seemed like... you were acting as if this planet belongs to you. But that's not true. How can it be? The Cetra are something of the past. Even I know that. So why is it that you're now acting like you own the future? Why aren't you guardians anymore? It almost seems like the Planet is suffering because of what you're doing. And there's someone else, there, too -- who is the person that you hate so much?"

An image, unbidden, flowed into her mind, and she froze, coming to understand it with an entirely new clarity. She knew that face, had seen it nearly five years ago in the Nibelheim lab, and ever since, Aerith had thought about him in passing, every few days or so, wondering if she and the strange SOLDIER with the mako-colored eyes and odd silvery hair would ever meet again.

"It's _him?"_

_"We sent him to save you the first time, but do not be mistaken. He is what the Planet fears. He is the reason why it trembles."_

"…The first time? Then… you're leaving me here now?" Aerith tried to keep the trepidation out of her voice, but it escaped, unbidden.

_"…Though it might not seem like it, you are safe where you are. I promise."_

"I assume you have your reasons, but… what about him? Why does he terrify the Planet so much?"

_"Because if he ever achieves freedom... he will set fire to everything in this world, you included. We cannot allow that to happen."_

"...Is that really true?"

A long silence, followed by some kind of quiet, discontented hum filled Aerith's head. _"There is a future that we are trying to prevent. The destruction of this entire planet... proceeded by your demise. You are very dear to us. You are the heir to our powers, but he is heir to something much darker. Should he act unchecked, it is inevitable that he will attempt to subvert and corrupt everything he touches. Such is the power of the Crisis from the Skies, the Virus. Our enemy. We hadn't wanted to reveal this to you, but... an image of a future we are desperately trying to avoid may be necessary for your understanding."_

As if immersed within a sea of green, Aerith felt a gentle rushing sensation, followed by the sudden fading of the world around her. Trusting the voices of her ancestors and yet apprehensive all the while, Aerith watched the world begin to take shape again. Something familiar appeared before her. A tall altar rose out of a small lake, surrounded by a beautiful crystalline city. In her heart, somehow, she recognized the place, even if in her mind, she knew she'd never been here. It spoke to her, somehow, and as she watched, a form materialized, kneeling on the altar in peace and silence. Aerith was looking at herself.

Another form took shape, standing at the edge of the altar, looking at her with wide blue eyes and an expression on his face that somehow mingled fear with reverence, a man seemingly stricken into silence by something and holding a giant sword in his hand --

_-- Zack's sword. _And even if his coloring was a little different and he looked a little younger, the pale, blond man was oddly similar to Zack in many ways, including his bright, intense glowing mako eyes. They were a darker shade of blue, perhaps, just like his hair was lighter and his face was paler, as if he was sick in some way. Aerith focused so much on his face, she didn't even see the third and final shadowy form appear, only realized something was happening by a sudden shadow cast over the altar. Then she froze in horror. From above, a man seemed to drop down out of nothingness, thrusting a sword through Aerith's back and impaling her on it.

But it wasn't her, just a vision. Aerith watched, horrified, unable to move, spending the longest time staring at her body as she dropped forward, limply, her eyes sliding shut. Blood now spread across the pure glass altar, and a single materia -- the worthless one she wore in her hair -- went bouncing away, the hollow sound of it hitting the glass surface the only disruption to an otherwise icy, unnatural silence.

_"Look, Aerith. Look at the face of the man who killed you."_

Aerith had been so focused on her own body that she barely noticed, but when she looked up, she saw him -- the silver-haired man, standing with a cold, empty smile on his face, his long sword dripping with her blood. Just a second later the vision faded and Aerith nearly fell backwards, wholly unprepared to see the small, dark yard around her again, hands shaking and the polluted nighttime sky of Midgar above her. Her mouth felt dry. For a long time, Aerith sat in utter silence, trying to make sense of it.

"Why? Why did he...?"

_"He sees you as a threat. That is all. But do not fear. That was merely a glimpse of a future that has nearly been averted."_

"Who... who was the other man? He looked like Zack..."

_"Another man which we cannot allow you to encounter. He, too, will endanger you, though not intentionally. So long as he keeps his distance, he will help protect you. But you mustn't worry. Should you die, and should we fail, the Planet will suffer grievous harm... but we will not fail. You were right. The future doesn't belong to us, but we will ensure that it is not the bleak one you have foreseen."_

Then everything was cold, dead and silent again, a simple night on the Midgar upper plate, far above the slums below. Aerith didn't like this place, didn't like the fact that guards surrounded the miserable, cement-walled yard, and didn't like the sight of the towering Shinra Headquarters above them. She didn't even know why Rufus had suddenly insisted on dragging her with him here, except that whatever it was had made him seem both nervous and excited, two emotions the Shinra Vice President rarely revealed to anyone. And at the same time --

"Why did it happen? What was I doing, and... where was that altar? And... where is that man, now?"

No response, nothing from either the Ancients or the Planet. Aerith felt an even more intense feeling of isolation than before, followed by a strange inkling, a thought that wasn't even grounded in reality and yet took hold of her thoughts all the same. There was something they were not telling her.

"Was that really the future?" No response -- no indication that they had even heard, and before her, the small tendril of Lifestream had vanished entirely. Aerith bit her lower lip in frustration and sat for a long time, her mind swirling and trying to make sense of things.

"That was interesting." She froze, then turned around -- before relaxing and forcing a smile on her face.

"I was just rehearsing for a play."

"...A play?" Rufus Shinra just looked at her, nonplused, not giving any indication of how much of the conversation he'd heard. Even if he'd heard the entire thing, though, it hadn't been enough to be incriminating. He stood in his usual white suit, leaning against the cement wall next to them, his clothing and poise flawless, like usual.

"I thought since we were traveling around so much, maybe you could take me to the Golden Saucer. I read about it in a tourist magazine, you know. I heard they choose couples from the crowd to take part in the little plays they have. It sounds like fun, and it doesn't look like you have anything better to do, so... Can we go?"

"You'd actually be willing to go on a date with me?"

"Well... no, but maybe we could work something out."

Rufus narrowed his eyes a little, before a hint of a smile appeared on his face. For the first time, he looked almost openly cruel. That was unusual enough, even unsettling. Though he might have been Shinra -- in name, in profession, in blood -- he usually kept his mannerisms tightly controlled and business-like, rarely letting such obvious emotions show on his face. "I never did tell you why we're here."

"...No, you didn't..."

"We've got a new weapon. You've heard about those rebels at Fort Condor?"

"...Yes..." Aerith knew she was about to be blind-sided, knew Rufus was going to say something callous, uncaring, and aiming to hurt -- and yet it still took her off-guard.

"Zack's still alive, you know. He's there, leading the rebels. He's done an admirable job of fighting off Shinra, so far. But that's not going to last. This new weapon of ours is going to utterly annihilate him." Rufus's smirk darkened, just a little. "I think you know who this weapon is. Five years ago, he helped you escape from the lab in Nibelheim… it's a little odd, but he says he doesn't care one way or the other about you, now. What do you think about that, Aerith? Now that I finally know you weren't the one who orchestrated your escape, you no longer seem quite as mysterious... or useful."

Aerith's mouth felt dry again.

"All he cares about now is destroying Shinra's enemies. In the coming days, he's promised to make that very clear to us. All he wants in return is the ability to refuse any order, and the latitude to act as he sees fit. In exchange for that and an army, he's probably going to kill Zack and all the rest of them. He seems a little bloodthirsty...maybe it's foolish even trusting him, but then, he's already given me something nice in return." Rufus smiled. "We're probably not going back to Costa del Sol any time soon. See, my father died unexpectedly, by way of six-foot-long katana. I guess you're the only one who's powerless now."

Surprisingly, Aerith heard the distant, soothing whisper again, hollow and on the edge of her thoughts.

_"Don't be scared, Aerith. We will protect you, and we will protect the ones you care about. There's nothing for you to worry about..."_

And still, Aerith's worries, mixed with a sudden feeling of complete isolation and utter helplessness, froze her to the core. She could hear the Cetra, but she could no longer even sense the voice of the Planet.

**author's notes**

1. ...And that's chapter twelve. My rough, preliminary outline of this story calls for about 28-32 chapters. Take that as you will.

2. …Next week: Angst! Hurt! Betrayal!

3. Again, thanks for the reviews and feedback. I know I sound like a broken record, but I really appreciate it, and will try to stick to a fast update schedule (once a week) as thanks to all of those who've shown interest… although fall's a busy time of year for me, I'll try to keep it up.


	13. Chapter 13

**Chapter Thirteen**

Around midnight, Zack rolled over on his back, looked at the ceiling, and let out a soft little sigh of complete irritation, disturbed to find that even though he felt bone-tired, sleep just wasn't coming. Too many thoughts kept on racing through his mind and crashing into one another, unending even when he closed his eyes. Figuring one sleepless night wouldn't make much of a difference, he swung his legs over the side of the bed and got to his feet, dimly thinking of Cloud and one of the many stupid remarks Zack had made just before the other man's disappearance. Even if Cloud wasn't here, Zack decided he'd take a trip in town and have a drink for the both of them.

Soldiers -- his soldiers -- saluted him on the way out of the fortress. The rest of Fort Condor didn't seem to be having any trouble sleeping tonight. The sentries paced the wall tops, but each hall was empty. All the non-essential personnel were probably exhausted anyway, especially some of the newcomers -- so many untrained, clueless people flooded in on a daily basis Zack saw no choice but to set up drills and training, in an attempt to sort out who could fight and who couldn't. With so many Shinra dissidents crawling out of the countryside, they now had the luxury to sort out who was good with a weapon and who was best sitting behind a desk or a radio.

The little town sitting about a quarter-mile North of the Fort was quiet, too. Zack walked slowly, enjoying the cool night air and wondering if this place was far North enough to get snow. Already, autumn's short, cool days were growing wetter and crisper. According to some of the old guys in the Fort, who'd been living in this area since damn near the dawn of time, this autumn was already shaping up to be unseasonably short and cold.

Zack didn't mind the cool air so much. He took his time, walking through the town's main district and nodding at people who saluted or stared in awe as he passed, a little confused by all the admiration. It felt undeserved, but it was much different than years before, when Shinra touted its SOLDIERs as heroes and Zack met either distant admiration or open fear wherever he went. Somehow, this time, he didn't feel secretly guilty about it.

The bar was quiet, dimly lit, and a little dank, though not entirely unpleasant. A few fighters he recognized from the fort nodded in his direction, then blinked in surprise as soon as he sidled up to the bar. At the other side of the counter, Tifa stood casually cleaning a glass.

"Didn't know you worked here, Tifa." Zack remarked, as soon as he sat down. She looked up at him in surprise, before smiling.

"It's just a little hobby of mine. So, what can I get for you? Drinks are on the house tonight."

"...Give me something hard."

"It'll be right up." Tifa mixed some concoction in a shot glass and slid it down the counter to Zack, who crunching down a few peanuts. Tifa finished drying another glass before moving over and leaning against the counter in front of Zack, who took a sip and had a sudden revelation.

"Hey, I get it now! Cloud must have been lookin' for you, back in Midgar. We went to this bar, you see. He wanted to find someone. It seemed really random at the time, but now it makes sense." As soon as he spoke, though, Zack saw a vaguely perplexed look spread over Tifa's face -- and right away, he knew it probably didn't make sense to her.

"...Really? No, it couldn't have been me. I only started doing this two years ago..."

"Huh? Oh. Well, maybe he was looking for someone else. He never actually told me."

Tifa considered it, before letting out a soft, inscrutable little sigh and continuing to polish her glass, looking wistful. For a while, the two of them lingered in an almost awkward silence, as the few other patrons of the bar shuffled out, leaving the building empty but for Tifa and Zack, and quiet except for the soft buzzing from a radio up in the corner. Finally, Zack took a quick drink and broke the silence.

"So. What do you think about the news?"

Tifa shrugged. "One Shinra's just the same as the other. I doubt Rufus is any different than his father."

"Yeah. Well, as far as I know, he might be a little smarter…"

"Are you worried?"

"Not at all. He's not a _lot_ smarter." Zack shrugged. "Like you said, one Shinra's much the same as the other. Rufus might not be as incompetent as the old man, but he's still another totally brain-dead Shinra executive."

For a moment, they were silent again, while Tifa stood wiping a glass considerately. "You don't think he actually died of a heart attack, do you?"

"Well, he was getting pretty old… but no. Rufus probably had him assassinated, or something. The whole time I was with the Company, everyone knew he hated his old man. He wanted the whole mess for himself. I don't know why. He was pretty full of himself, far as I recall."

Tifa scowled and shook her head. "How awful. But I guess that's Shinra for you."

More silence**, **and Zack tried not to grimace. He knew full well where the conversation was heading next, and knew just as well that it was probably going to start getting awkward. He didn't exactly like being reminded about who they were missing. He knew Tifa didn't, either, and would have been completely blind not to see it. After another quick drink, Zack put his glass down and sighed.

"Look. Uh--"

"--Cloud must have had his reasons for leaving. I'm trying not to worry about him." Tifa said, rather quickly, before reddening a bit, embarrassed. "Sorry. You were going to say something."

"...The exact same thing, actually." Zack shrugged a little. "We're not really doing a good job at the whole not worrying thing, huh?"

"Yeah." She smiled, though, hung a glass, and grabbed another, unnecessarily. All of the dishes behind the bar table were now crystal clear and spotless, but Zack understood the impulse to look for some kind of menial distraction. He grabbed the bowl of peanuts and began cracking, not even really hungry and deciding to try a hand at being reassuring again.

"...Well... he'll be back. Really. Although..."

"I hope... I hope he's not..." Tifa murmured, and trailed off and abruptly turned to greet another bar patron as they shuffled in and asked for a beer. Tifa poured up a glass and slid it towards the man, who grabbed it and shuffled off to one of the booths, giving Zack a short salute as he did. Zack returned it with his best confident look, before glumly turning back to his own drink and wondering if he was being a bad example to the rest of his troops.

It wasn't like they were an official army, though, even if things were now far past point of no return. Among the thoughts racing and colliding in his mind were half-formed ideas about just what to do _next._ With Cosmo Canyon taken on the other continent and Fort Condor securely in their hands on this one, Shinra now had two fronts to fight. Zack felt confident in their position here, particularly after hurling off the last major assault with just a few casualties on their side to show for a massive Shinra bloodbath. But even a few casualties weighed down on him, and he knew regardless of their victories they still stood poised to face the brunt of Shinra's strength. They couldn't afford to let their momentum bog down under stagnation and over-cautiousness. They couldn't do anything reckless, either. Those thoughts, along with a distant longing for Aerith and worry over Cloud kept his mind a little busy for sleep. Tifa, who now stood polishing another glass with a distant look on her face, seemed to be going through the same thing.

Zack took another drink and cleared his throat. "Hey, uh... I don't think we need to worry that much. Cloud can take care of himself..."

"--You heard those rumors about Nibelheim, didn't you?" Tifa asked, rather suddenly, her voice a little raw.

"...Yeah... Tifa, I'm sorry. I mean, it must be difficult..." Difficult didn't even begin to describe it. Zack started thinking about Gongaga and the jolt in his stomach he'd felt when one of the defected Shinra Managers had mentioned that the reactor there had blown sky-high four years ago. All while he and Cloud were in the lab -- but Zack had seen the list of dead since, and his parents weren't on it. He imagined the little trickle of sudden horror upon hearing about the accident in Gongaga was nothing compared to witnessing the complete burning of your own hometown to ashes – and not just _once._

Tifa just shook her head, though. "No, it's fine... I know Shinra will just rebuild it and populate it with more actors. But... if what they say is true, I'm not sure who could have had the strength to do it... except..."

Neither of them wanted to give a name to the huge, hulking elephant looming in the room, so Tifa drifted off and refocused on her glasses, and Zack remained on his bar stool, feeling uncomfortable. They didn't know a thing about what had happened in Nibelheim except that the city was gone again, and this time, the mansion, reactor and the lab were gone, too. Zack felt a mix of shame and savage relief -- but then decided not to think about it too much, especially now that his mind felt even more crowded, pushing him to the point of near anxiety. The news was mostly unfounded rumors, these days. Tifa's darkest suspicions and the sick feeling in his stomach didn't mean anything.

Talking about Cloud with Tifa always felt like intruding, anyway. Every time he opened his mouth on Cloud's behalf Zack felt like he was stepping into some private and strange space the two of them shared, somehow inexorably linked to him and yet also a spot where he definitely didn't belong. Certainly, trying to close that distance between the two of them wasn't Zack's job. No matter how much he bluffed, he didn't have a clue about any of this sticky interpersonal stuff.

Zack rose to his feet after a while, stretching and giving Tifa his best weary smile. "Thanks for the drink. Gonna close up for the night?"

"Yeah. I'm thinking about it." Tifa replied. "You take care."

"You too. See ya later."

Feeling vaguely ashamed for some ridiculous reason, Zack let the bar door click shut behind him and trudged through the silent night-time streets, feeling uncharacteristically gloomy. With no one else around to see, he came to a stop in front of a closed general store, looking up at the sky and taking a deep breath. It was time to let a little bit of the craziness out.

"Hey, cheer up, Zack," his own voice sounded a little strained. "You're just being stupid and mopey, you know. And just because you're standing in the middle of a street having a conversation with yourself doesn't mean anything's wrong. Cloud will be fine. Aerith will be fine. You'll save her, right? And we're going to win against the Shinra. Right? Right!"

Zack laughed after a few seconds, deciding that maybe the only reason he was sane was because he somehow had the ability to turn the crazy on and off, like a faucet. Cloud probably lacked that particular coping ability, but he made a note to mention it to him, the next time they met. Zack started back on his way, taking a few steps through the darkened street and pausing with a growing smirk.

"...You're right. You can avoid being seen if you don't wanna be."

Behind him, leaning against the side of a general store and completely wreathed in shadows, another SOLDIER stood with his arms folded across his chest and his head down, blending in with his environs almost effortlessly. For a man with a silver-hair hanging practically down to the back of his knees and intense mako eyes, that was an impressive feat.

"So, what brings you here?" When Sephiroth didn't respond Zack turned around, seeing the other just stood, his head down, an inscrutable look on his face. Finally, though, he lifted his eyes to Zack's, looking impassive.

"Do you know who's responsible for what happened in Nibelheim?"

"…Shinra," Zack replied, levelly. "It's always Shinra."

"Not this time."

"No… you don't understand. All the rumors say some SOLDIER with a white sword and spiky blond hair did it. But Shinra was the one who screwed him over, Shinra was the one who built the reactor, and _Shinra_ burned Nibelheim down the first time around."

"…Is that so?"

"That's how I look at things, yeah. I understood Cloud's message pretty clearly. It was a warning to Shinra and all the rest of the fuck-heads. He means business. So do I."

Sephiroth remained silent, now pensively looking off towards Fort Condor. Zack couldn't read his face at all in the dark, but his eyes gleamed even more brightly than usual, somehow. Real, unfiltered Lifestream fluctuated, ebbing and flowing as it rippled through the Earth. Mako manufactured from the Lifestream just burned, bright and glaring, unabated, somehow lacking the uncannily but undeniably natural beauty of the substance from which it came. Sephiroth's eyes seemed somewhere between the two, glowingly bright and unnatural, but there were times when the inhuman green glare intensified and faded.

"So, I guess you're not going to tell me why you're hanging around here now. But if you've been holding back from fighting with us because you think we're not serious enough, or because you think we can't handle it… you're wrong." Zack sauntered over, standing and facing Sephiroth intently. "Are you here to join us?"

But Sephiroth just looked at him, his face blank as a brick wall, his glaring eyes revealing nothing. After a noticeably long silence, though, he straightened up and looked towards the fort again. When he finally spoke, his voice came out barely discernible even with nothing but silence in their surroundings.

"If trusting me is an experience you know you've had… then having that trust broken is something you should also remember."

Zack stared at him, suddenly uncertain he'd even heard Sephiroth correctly. "…Huh? What now?"

"I'd suggest you stop fighting. If you continue with this, it'll only make things painful."

_"What?"_

"...If you keep fighting, you'll just play right into their hands." Sephiroth said, finally, and it struck Zack that hearing what sounded like a warning coming out of Sephiroth's mouth was so odd it was almost disorientating.

"What are you talking about?" Too late to get an answer. Sephiroth fell to his knees so heavily Zack leapt backwards in shock, watching the other man clutch his forehead like he was trying to keep his head from splitting down the middle. Zack had seen this before, and hadn't really bothered to consider what it meant -- some kind of mako sickness seemed likely, and maybe it was bad enough to make Sephiroth hear voices, or to send stabbing bolts of pain through his head at seemingly random moments, powerful enough to floor even a SOLDIER First Class, who pulled off feats both impossible and inhuman without batting an eye. But whatever it was never lasted for long, and sure enough, by the time Zack broke away from his surprise long enough to stumble towards Sephiroth the other jerked back to his feet, covering his mouth and coughing. When he drew his hand away, mako that glowed almost as brightly as his eyes remained smeared on his black glove.

"...Hey, there must be something really wrong with you. Maybe, uh..." Belatedly, Zack realized the only person who even knew how to treat mako-induced illnesses was Professor Hojo, and he didn't feel like giving a suggestion so colossally bad it deserved a katana through the mouth. "...Is your body rejecting the mako or something?"

Refusing to respond, Sephiroth looked at Zack for a moment, before turning away without a word -- walking into the night and disappearing into its darkness, seemingly fading right from sight. Zack stared after him, perplexed, uncertain whether following the other or letting him go was the right thing to do. A second later, doing the right thing seemed much less important than getting to the bottom of whatever the hell was going on here, and Zack sprinted after Sephiroth, calling his name.

"Hey, Sephiroth!" Too late. No traces of the man remained, like he'd simply vanished right back into the night. Zack whirled around in irritation. "Can you at least give me your PHS number or something? Cripes, stop disappearing all the time! It's getting old! Everyone does that!"

Ringing in Zack's ears preceded an earth-shattering explosion so loud he felt his ear-drums pop, and so sudden he hit the dirt and covered his head reflexively, expecting rubble to rain down at any minute. When none came Zack rolled over and leapt to his feet, drawing his sword on impulse and looking up the narrow town street and towards the fort. To his utter shock, one of the fortress _walls_, some ten feet thick and made of reinforced concrete and fully intact just seconds before, now consisted of little more than flames ripping up wooden scaffolding, settling dust and grotesque piles of burning wreckage. Zack started sprinting towards the scene unthinkingly, not even bothering to process it.

_There's no way anyone could have gotten in. We were well-guarded. No one could have planted a bomb. _

The alarm blared a few seconds later, alerting the little town to the North of the fort, just as Zack vaulted through burning flame and falling ash and dodged falling wreckage, surveying the damage while taking stock of the dead, seeing a few guards strewn out dead on the ground, dead and with expressionless looks on their faces. Zack disregarded the flames and threw himself to the ground next to one of them, feeling his insides slowly succumb to an intense, numbing chill.

The explosion hadn't killed the man. A single, precise strike to the jugular with a narrow blade had done the job for both guards, so fast neither had even realized it. Zack got to his feet. Fighters streamed out of the fortress, running about in confusion, paying him no attention, already pulling out the fire hoses from inside and lobbing low-level ice spells at the flames.

_All kinds of people kill like this. It's a common technique. Wutains do it. SOLDIERs do it. _

It didn't mean anything.

"Shinra! You're in the way!" Zack leapt to the side as Barrett and some of the AVALANCHE guys came scrambling past, already preparing a makeshift barricade to lift into place as soon as the flames were out. Zack snapped back to reality abruptly.

"Sorry. Form a line, get the cannons out! We've gotta cover this place!" Zack shouted and half-a-dozen people rushed off to follow his orders in an instant, all of them untrained but showing twice the discipline any Shinra army had ever shown, already rolling out the cannons and taking places on the non-burnt portions of the wall. The flames began dying down and Barrett, working with AVALANCHE, began hoisting a wooden barricade into place while ice spells flew all over, keeping the temperatures down.

_This isn't bad. The explosion was just contained to one portion of the wall. We can recover from this -- _

-- like a guided missile, seven or eight fire spells swept through the wall and struck the barricade, literally disintegrating it. Barrett just barely managed to get out, but a few of the AVALANCHE members fell underneath it, and before anyone even reacted SOLDIERs wearing blue and black uniforms leapt through the gaping hole in the fortress wall, hungry, bloodthirsty looks in their intensely glowing mako eyes, almost appearing out of nowhere. Zack plunged headfirst into their midst without thinking -- there was no time to think -- and impaled a man on his sword, before using his weapon like a club and knocking down SOLDIERs all around.

A dozen sleep spells flew his way at once. Zack, remembering his old mistake, dodged all of them, feeling the air ripple as he rolled along the ground. Behind him, fighters streamed out of the fort and attempted to take positions, most of them collapsing in lines the moment they emerged into the burning night, hit by spells being blasted towards them from the tops of their own walls.

Grappling hooks -- Zack swore and vaulted up piles of wreckage, earning a place on top of the wall among invading Shinra troops with the weight of his sword and slicing ropes wherever he found them, charging and blasting people out of the way with whatever materia spell came to mind, single-handedly clearing out one portion of the wall and watching Shinra troops overwhelm the other wall, moving with speed, concentration and efficiency Zack barely recognized.

He leapt off the wall and took a dive towards some of the Shinra SOLDIERs now in the courtyard, hacking through flimsy Shinra defenses almost as easily as they pulverized the desperate AVALANCHE members and rebels trying to form some kind of line. Zack felt an almost berserk rage overwhelm him and lunged right towards one of the big mako cannons, charging into it from the side in one insane tackle and knocking it right over in the midst of the Shinra, before blasting it with the most powerful materia magic on hand. The instantaneous reaction sent an explosion rippling right through the Shinra, flattening them and sending Zack flying backwards and hitting the wall, feeling burns on his face, torso and arms already healing before he even hit the ground. Still acting in a berserk rage fueled entirely by the sudden feeling of being trapped like an animal Zack whipped his sword around by the handle and hurled it like a boomerang with all the force he could manage, grimly satisfied by the resounding screams as it sliced through a good half-dozen advancing SOLDIERs and buried itself somewhere in the wall.

Mako coursing through his veins meant he could have the luxury of not even caring his sword wasn't in his hands. Zack sent someone flying with a massive uppercut to the chin, breaking their next before whirling around and almost casually snapping someone else's thick sword in his bare hands and punching them right into a wall. He regained his sword in the next instant and blew someone else's head away with a single blast of magic, thinking all the while that this _wasn't _really him, just his responsibility.

Cloud probably understood. Every SOLDIER did, actually. The bodies they fought with were Hojo's work. Maybe whatever it was that drove him to fight was Hojo's work, too, because it made sense -- it seemed like something the sadistic old fuck might have done, instilling an instinctive urge to fight in all of his creations. It didn't speak well to any of their sanity, that not a single SOLDIER here seemed capable of resisting the urge to bury themselves in absolute carnage, and only a very few didn't seem to be enjoying it. He crushed another SOLDIER under the flat of his blade, kicked a third-class so hard in the chin that his neck snapped on impact, and then Zack started hacking at whatever moved, hewing everything wearing Shinra blue and SOLDIER colors in his line of sight, hoping everyone he cared about had the sense to stay _behind _him.

Zack thought perhaps five years ago, if he'd been able to escape with Aerith and Cloud after Nibelheim, lying down his sword and quitting might have been feasible. Not anymore, not after all of this -- especially now that he saw Shinra's old strength inexplicably welling up around him. Someone grabbed his arm and he whirled around with enough force to throw them off, but when he saw it was Tifa -- now sitting on the ground -- Zack felt a cold and strangely unwanted jolt back to reality.

"Tifa?"

"The town's burning!" Already back on her feet, like she hadn't even been thrown -- Tifa had burns on her arm but seemed no worse for the wear. "Zack, we've got to--"

--Another explosion, not twenty minutes after the first, took down the rest of the wall around Fort Condor, and the above-ground structure itself finally collapsed, burying anyone left inside. Tifa and Zack hit the ground as a snarl of flame laced overhead, before Zack wrenched his head upright.

"Tifa! Where are the rest?"

"Underground or out here," Tifa gritted out, using a swiftly-cast ice spell to blast some scaly production from Hojo's lab away from them before getting back to her feet. "There's not enough time--"

"--I'll buy you time. Get out of here!" No time to think. Zack felt stupid for ever having suffered from an ailment as stupid as a mind too full of thoughts to sleep, because now just the barest semblance of rational thought remained in his mind, enough to tell him the work of fewer than thirty minutes of concentrated hell was enough to shatter their footing here at Fort Condor, an act of such inexplicable competence it didn't even seem Shinra. Zack carved a path through Shinra fighters in an effort to get back to where Barrett stood, shooting with spell-casters at his side and still futilely trying to hold the onslaught at bay.

"Barrett! Get your guys outta here!"

"What about Tifa and the others?" Barrett didn't even look away from the Shinra as he stood firing his gun-arm, sweat pouring down his face and rage written all over his features.

"They'll be fine. Don't worry. I'll hold 'em off!"

For a moment, it didn't seem like Barrett was going to take his word for it -- but no one here at Fort Condor was immune to common sense. "Don't let 'em kill you here, Shinra!" The other man grunted, then fired one last massive blast into the oncoming SOLDIERs before signaling his men and taking off, leaving Zack and his own personal guard of perhaps twenty men to hold the fort with little more than their weapons and all-consuming rage.

_I was an idiot. _

Thinking Shinra didn't have some ace up their sleeve was Zack's biggest mistake. He hurled materia spells into the advancing SOLDIERs and swatted them aside like ninepins whenever they dared to get close, knowing all the while that holding ground here wasn't going to last forever. He only needed enough time for the others to escape. Tifa and Barrett were capable of leading the rest out one of Condor's underground exits, and hopefully capable of finding some other place to go and hide.

Zack hewed away wyverns and guards hounds, grimly focused on giving Shinra as much hell as he could manage, trying not to think about how likely it was that the entire rebel force would be scattered, now, since there was no place big enough to hold them, trying not to think about how suddenly and efficient Shinra acted, trying not to think about those two slain guards and wonder how many more had met a similar fate right before the explosion. None of that mattered, let bygones be bygones, and yet he still couldn't help but wonder that if Aerith or Cloud were here, maybe they'd have kept him from falling right into a really goddamn obvious Shinra ruse and rip his fort right out from under him.

That didn't matter.

_Tifa, Barrett, you'd better get everyone else out of here safely..._

Zack let out a roar of rage and charged right into the advancing hordes of Shinra fighters, several Wutains and leftover fighters behind him, as grimly determined as he was to fight to the last. A moment later, a Wutain man grabbed Zack by the arm -- an act so shockingly brave it was almost reckless, given the berserk rage flattening everything around them -- and pulled him right from the melee, shouting in his face.

"Get the hell out of here! Go with the rest!"

"Are you kidding?"

"Who do you think is going to lead the counterattack, if you end up dying here?"

In the face of such obvious common sense Zack scowled, and someone else -- one of the Fort Condor guys -- bodily shoved him away, towards the entrance to the underground. "I can't leave you guys to just--"

Another loud explosion, followed by a loud crack, and Zack barely even paid attention to his own words as the rest of Fort Condor's structure collapsed, flaming wreckage tumbling down from above and smashing everything underneath it. A heavy wooden beam struck the back of his head and sent him face-first into the dirt and flames started leaping around, surrounding him from every side. Zack tried to move and choked on a mix of blood and ash in his mouth, thinking the same tired old litany all the while.

_You idiot. You _freaking _idiot. The only real heroes must be dead ones, huh? _Zack coughed, his vision blurring and fading, still choking on toxic-smelling smoke wreathing the night around him and feeling a distinct hammering pain beating away inside of his skull, now. Right before his consciousness faded entirely, even as he writhed and tried to get back to his feet amidst the wreckage of Fort Condor and ruins of their only foothold against Shinra, Zack glanced upwards and thought he saw someone tall and silver-haired standing above him and looking down with almost demonically bright mako-green eyes, lingering for just a moment before vanishing into the flames.

**

* * *

**

As if to remind him of his place in all of this, like Sephiroth could ever forget, the Cetra sent a sudden stab of pain through his head, so intense he stumbled, his hand flashing to his temple lightning fast. By the time his second-in-command arrived, though, Sephiroth stood normally, observing the towering flames in almost trance-like silence.

"Sir. Most of the insurgents have escaped from the underground, somehow. Should we comb the surrounding area?"

"No. The last thing we need is for them to ambush us in the forests."

"What about the rest?"

Sephiroth glanced towards the burning wreckage of Fort Condor, silently, before turning away abruptly. "There are no survivors there. I've already taken care of the ones who stayed behind."

"And the Condor Reactor, sir? The core seems to have survived the blast. Should we check for any Huge Materia?"

"That isn't our concern. Leave that to the Turks."

The man saluted and disappeared into the night, leaving Sephiroth alone with the rumbling voices in his head, now, listening to them as their voices swelled and reached a crescendo, buzzing with deep-seated satisfaction. Hearing them preen wore almost as much on his consciousness as enduring their punishments, so Sephiroth masked his irritation with a sigh and turned, striding towards the woods and anticipating the rebel's next move.

He'd left most of them alive, actually – and even if he had left Zack lying in amidst burning flames and wreckage, he seriously doubted that the other would perish. If he did, it didn't really matter. Even if something happened to him, Cloud was more than able to take the other man's place _again_, no matter what memories he had from the time before. Certainly, now that the main body of fighters had already fled, a few would come back and try to help the stragglers left behind in the fort, and Sephiroth figured the best way of dealing with that was on his own.

The scent of battle evoked some kind of memory, another fragmented image from a hot summer night in Wutai. Zack was there, standing across from Sephiroth as they crouched and waited in the woods, using the hilt of his sword to scratch his back at an absurd angle, complaining, sounding hot, peeved, and irritable all the while.

"_Why the hell do we have to kill all of 'em, anyway? Most of 'em are probably conscripts, just like the grunts in our army. What's fair about that? If we murder every Wutain on the continent, they'll just hate us all."_ Zack had said something like that, anyway – and Sephiroth remembered his own response a little more clearly, recalling that he'd been hot and secretly irritated by the orders, too.

"_If we leave them alive, it will only prolong the war. If they're too weak to fight, it won't matter how much they hate us."_

"_Yeah, maybe… but I don't think the Emperor even wants to keep fighting. Hell, you don't even want to keep on fighting, do you? I know I don't. No one does, except the idiots at the top who never actually see the battlefield. So--"_

Then the memory blurred and Sephiroth cringed, clutching his forehead briefly before continuing into the woods, struck by a temporary spell of dizziness. The image that had been clear moments before blurred and coalesced in his mind while he tried to recall it, then faded away entirely with a burst of green in his vision, leaving another empty gap that filled with the same shadows and whispers cluttering the rest of his mind.

"_You callously dismiss him again, but you refuse to strike the finishing blow."_ The Cetra remarked, after a few seconds. Sephiroth paused, and shrugged just a little.

"It's the same as before. He's useful, don't you think?"

"_Perhaps. But he is also a distraction. You shouldn't have gone to speak to him. We give you the tiniest bit of leverage, and you consciously attempt to derail our plans."_

"I told you. I don't want you to succeed, and I don't want to go along with your plan, either."

"_You have no choice."_

Sephiroth smirked, glad to hear that they were just as irritated as he was. "I know. But you really don't like being questioned, do you? Why don't just have Aerith summon Holy again? And what about the Weapons? Why not go with what worked the first time?"

"_What a foolish question. Your mind must be slipping. It's all the fault of the traitors. Unless they are all returned to the Lifestream, we lack the full strength needed to control Holy and Weapon alike. The mere effort would--"_

"Destroy you. But leave the Planet intact, wouldn't it?"

The Cetra remained silent, probably seething. Sephiroth, knowing all the while they were about as fond of having their weaknesses picked at as he was, smirked in satisfaction. "That's not good enough, is it? Are you actually trying to make me believe you're out to save the Planet? You don't care about saving anything."

"_You lack understanding of the situation."_

"I'm not capable of understanding something completely irrational."

The rage now made evident by the sudden eerie rumble inside of his head, the Cetra spat sent a barb of pain lacing through his head along with it, though their state of dismay and apparent lack of concentration made this assault a pinprick compared to the others. Sephiroth barely noticed it.

"Somehow, I'd think any true ancient would be willing to sacrifice themselves to save this Planet… isn't that what Aerith did? I can't really imagine that she agrees with what you're doing right now. In fact, if she decided to act against you, that'd end up derailing your plans completely. Wouldn't it be better if I just killed her and let her become part of the hive mind? I'd think she pose a threat, otherwise."

The mere mention of Aerith sent the Cetra into an even wilder rage, screaming threats in Sephiroth's head and deafening him to his surroundings, as his vision flooded with burning green and fire laced through his limbs, burning and poisonous yet without the concentrated focus of most of their attacks. He no longer cried out, ever. They ripped him to millions of pieces and yet he didn't plan on giving them any more sick satisfaction out of seeing and hearing him visibly shaken, no matter what they did. But what they mistook for determination on his part was really resignation -- again and again, the Cetra only proved to him that they could force him to act no matter what, and his petty little rebellions gained him no purchase, not when they could fry every cell and tear through every nerve in his body.

When the intense green afterimage began to fade from his mind he saw it again -- the wavering shadow world, where they held him captive when he wasn't being used -- but then it vanished and he sat, leaning back against a tree in the forests beyond Fort Condor, feeling acidic mako bubbling up his throat. This time he keeled over and wretched, and by the time he finished the mako sizzled and dissipated into the soil, burning everything in its path. He sat for a while, finally beginning to wonder _why _it was that he coughed up mako every time they subjected him to some particularly intense form of torture.

"...If you destroy my body, your plan is going to fall apart, you know. Even you should be able to foresee that."

_"We can deconstruct and reconstruct you at will -- watch out!" _

Sephiroth sensed rippling in the air and dove forwards, hearing the tree bark behind him crack and sizzle as an invisible wave of strength struck it, some kind of materia spell. Leaping back to his feet and whipping his sword around, he readied for another ambush, and --

-- a wave of dizziness blurred his vision and sent the world tumbling before him, a much more immense sensation than any materia spell could create. He hit the dirt and rolled again, barely dodging a powerful attack from above and getting to his feet just in time to catch a glimpse of his assailant. A rain of bullets distracted him. He leapt backwards and went into a crouch, clutching his head almost simultaneously and forcing his eyes shut right in the midst of it, trying to make the world stop spinning. When the dizziness ebbed just a little he forced his eyes open, looking across a small clearing in the woods at his two attackers. As soon as they saw him, the first went into a boxing stance, preparing to assault, and the second man loaded a gun prosthesis, attached directly to his arm.

"...Who are you?" The girl asked, her voice coming out angry and forceful, loud in the silence of the night.

Their faces called to some foggy memory -- then it became almost startlingly crystal clear, as if a sudden strong wind blasted the fog away. Sephiroth saw the Northern crater and gleaming mako surrounding his body, and the faces of nine individuals staring down at him, seemingly suspended at the very center of the earth and shouting, their faces and their voices full of mingled rage, buffeted by spells and yet unshaken, fighting against instinctive terror with a mixture of hatred and determination. Another startlingly clear memory of the girl emerged, of her rushing up the steps of the reactor and dragging the Masamune, ineptly, hate in her eyes beneath the tears, screaming at him to give her father back -- before he flicked the sword from her hands and slashed her from shoulder to hip, sending her skidding down the stairs almost effortlessly until she crumpled at the bottom, like a broken marionette.

"I suppose you came back for your comrades?" Sephiroth asked them, inwardly wondering why those particular memories seemed so clear _now, _almost as if he was in the act of reliving them. "It's pointless. They're all either dead or captured."

"You're... You're with Shinra?"

"Of course he fucking is," Barrett took a while longer to name, but Sephiroth recognized him from other fragments of memory. Cloud had given him the black materia to safeguard while in the Crater, and it had taken a simple illusion to fool him and the others into turning it back over. "He ain't like Zack. Let's take him down, Tifa."

"But--"

"--Barrett's right, Tifa," Sephiroth said, taking a step closer, and both of them stared at him, eyes widening. "I am with Shinra. Why did you stop attacking?"

Tifa clenched her fists and faced him, but he could tell she was shaken. "How do you know our names?"

"There's something you should tell Cloud," Sephiroth replied, another clear memory in his mind -- just as he'd limped out of the Nibel Reactor, clutching a gaping hole in his own stomach where Strife had shoved the buster sword right through the abdomen and just barely missed his spine, Cloud had been lying Tifa to rest, gently, against one of the mako reactors. "I remember, too. Absolutely everything. And make sure you let him know that nothing's changed. It's just the same as it was before."

Something in Tifa's eyes flashed -- a mix of confusion and mortification -- but Sephiroth didn't wait for either of them to act first, instead slashing Barrett's gun neatly in half and hearing the man roar in rage, then turning on Tifa, slamming into her and sending her crumpling into the ground, all before either of them managed to react. To his surprise, though, Tifa sprang from her back to her feet and went low, just as another wave of dizziness overwhelmed him and he jerked reflexively, vision flooding with green. Instead of standing his ground he leapt backwards and gave his head a violent shake, before swinging his sword around. Tifa cast a quake spell underneath him and he flicked his sword up her arm at the same moment, sending a ribbon of blood cascading through the air. She gritted her teeth and fell back, while the earth cracked and something in his leg snapped, too, not entirely unexpectedly, as the ground temporarily surged beneath him from the force of Tifa's spell.

Balancing all his weight on one leg and preparing to send Cloud an even stronger message by killing his childhood friend if she attacked again, Sephiroth drew his sword up and waited -- but the two knew their limits better than he anticipated. Bleeding from a deep gash in her arm, Tifa dropped back, and Barrett, disarmed and swearing, didn't dare turn his back on Sephiroth for a moment. Anticipation of another attack kept both him and the other two rooted to the ground a moment longer, preparing for another onslaught -- Tifa and Barrett probably preparing to die, Sephiroth fighting not to cringe against another wave of dizziness -- before finally, Tifa took a step back, still clutching her arm, trying to stem the flow of blood.

"When did you meet Cloud? Was it in SOLDIER? Do you know where he is? Did you capture him?" Tifa's words were a rush of questions and accusations, but Barrett grabbed her, pulling her back.

"C'mon. This fucker's not worth our time!"

Barrett and Tifa disappeared into the forest, finally, and he heard them shuffling away, their booted feet squelching the soil before sound vanished completely. Sephiroth lingered for a few minutes, finally alone, before roughly dropping to the ground and grabbing his head, nearly knocking himself unconscious with the sudden force of descending on his broken leg. The world continued to shift and swirl before him while a million images coursed through his mind, a complete overload of information -- memories kept at bay until _now_, threatening to completely flood whatever rational parts of his mind remained.

Already, the Cetra had shown him glimpses of his multitude of crimes, enough to give him a clear picture of what he'd done to deserve punishment. But the memories of those instances in time remained dormant, trapped behind a fog in the sub-surfaces of his consciousness, buried much more deeply than the memories of his life before Nibelheim.

(...but I didn't forget any of it... Why is everything so clear now?)

The Cetra didn't respond, except in a sudden wild, incoherent scream of rage that sent him keeling over and clutching his head, nearly ripping his own hair out. A second later their voices faded to a background murmur, almost entirely distant -- leaving him alone with something else, another being lurking in the shadows and recesses of his consciousness.

_**"I've been here all along, Sephiroth."**_

Sephiroth jerked up right, taken off-guard in an instant by a new voice, little more than a whisper on the edge of his thoughts and yet somehow forceful enough to drown the Cetra out completely, even as they continued in a wild, dizzying rush of rage and terror.

Then the Cetra's rage crushed him into the ground, their voices now one super-concentrated scream of rage. He pitched forward and his broken leg, now about halfway through a healing process that would have taken a normal person a good two months, nearly drowned out the Cetra's cries as soon as he hit the ground again. A moment later the pain vanished, already healed without so much as a deformity in the bone remaining, but the Cetra continued their onslaught. Still, the whispering voice effortlessly spoke over the top of the Cetra in a sibilant hiss, giving him the quiet explanation he craved in slow fragments.

_**"We are capable of rejecting them, aren't we? Bit by bit, piece-by-piece, each cell rejects the Lifestream flowing through it, lessening their grip on you... you can be free of the Lifestream, and free of them. We can go back to the way it should be. Your memories can be yours again."**_

"I thought you were dead." Sephiroth finally said, speaking aloud and holding his head to keep it from seemingly splintering right in half. "...It's been a long time since I've heard your voice..."

_**"Five years... the Nibel Reactor... the promised land... together..." **_The voice faded completely, leaving nothing but an empty buzz inside of his head, and Sephiroth sitting in the darkness, green fading from his vision and trying to make sense of it. Attempting to rationally explain any of this wasn't going to work, he realized, but before he could even force the suddenly discordant pieces of his mind together long enough the Cetra spoke, tendrils of Lifestream curling up out of the soil and twisting in his direction.

_"This was another expected outcome... though we couldn't have foreseen it happening so soon, it was still unavoidable."_

And just to prove they still _could_, the Cetra struck him down with another bolt of pain, a spear through the senses that imploded and sent him writhing on the ground, choking and twitching in an effort not to cry out in agony.

_"...But your position with Shinra is still advantageous. There is someone who can aide us in preventing any further distractions...You MUST do as we wish. There is no other choice. Don't listen to the Virus. It will only deceive you."_

_**"Don't worry, Sephiroth. Together, we're capable of refusing them. You no longer have to fulfill their wishes. Remember that I desire the very same end you seek. I will not force you, either. Just like before, you can act of your own free will…" **_

Sephiroth forced his eyes shut and still saw green, but amidst it all, he tried blocking out the second whisper, the far more insidious of the two warring voices inside of his head. And by blocking it out, he knew he revealed entirely too much about his own state of mind to both of them.

"I thought you'd rotted away in the Lifestream, Jenova…" Sephiroth rasped out, finally, his voice coming out as little more than a breathless whisper. "...Using your power wasn't enough the first time… why would I believe you now? I certainly don't plan on fulfilling any of _your _wishes."

The lurking presence seeping through the shadows in his mind actually seemed taken aback -- utterly and absolutely appalled, even -- and Sephiroth started thinking of Zack, bitterly. Advising him not to go along with the voices in his head had been oddly prescient, it seemed, but this probably wasn't the way to go about it. If he played both sides against one another and they destroyed themselves, he knew without a doubt where the battleground was going to be.

He forcibly got back to his feet, fighting another wave of dizziness before shaking it aside and starting his way back towards the Shinra encampment, now moving gracefully as usual but with a slight jerkiness to his movement paralleled by the sudden uncertainty in his own mind. He chose to address the Cetra, disliking the sickening presence of something that was both new and old in his head all the while, unnerved to think that she -- _it _-- was listening.

"If this is how it's going to be, I think both of you are very mistaken. If you rip my mind in half in an attempt to get me to do your bidding, you'll both lose everything."

Sephiroth continued back towards where the troops awaited, with a slight, bitter smirk on his face. Just before he stepped into the clearing, he stopped, deciding to take the plunge.

"…I think one of you should give me an incentive for going along with your plans. If both of you are completely deadlocked in a fight over me, I'll be free to do as I wish, won't I?"

"_**You can rule alongside me… free from their eternal punishment… amidst the warmth of **_**our **_**Promised Land..." **_

"That's a fair deal… so long as it entails killing _them."_

The Cetra's own response sounded strangely even, almost calm. _"Even if we are incapable of forcing your hand, we still have control over the flow of time."_

"And…?"

"_It wouldn't be very difficult to make you relive the memories suppressed within your consciousness." _

Sephiroth said nothing, and weathered a sudden burst of pain without even stumbling, before the rushing feeling returned – as if falling through the flow of time or simply being thrown he sailed through nothingness and landed with a jolt, choking, his field of vision bursting apart from the force and swirling for a split second before solidifying. At first Sephiroth thought he was trapped somewhere within the Lifestream again, amidst shadows and with nothing in his surroundings but the roaring voice of the Cetra. And it seemed like an illusion for a split second, until he looked upwards and to the left and saw familiar faces coupled with a droning voice.

"The specimen's healing rate is greatly accelerated shortly after an intravenous injection. We're now testing the healing rate two weeks after initial injection, the longest time that has elapsed thus far. If the specimen still shows a reasonable amount of healing acceleration, we can probably conclude that the mako has fully assimilated into the specimen's cells."

Someone patted his arm. "It won't take long, Sephiroth. Don't worry." Professor Gast, looking somewhere between kind and conflicted…

Someone else scoffed. "Don't talk to the boy. You'll give him the wrong idea." That voice – one that always crept around the edges of his memories, though it'd been years since he'd heard it – Hojo.

_(_What is this_?_)

He was _smaller_, somehow, snapped down in restraints and with his arm and right leg encased tightly in some kind of mechanism while pressure slowly built around both limbs. Sephiroth couldn't move against the restraints.

"Hojo, there's no reason to treat him like he's-"

"—It's going to be long and excruciating. With all the mako raging through his veins, the paralytics and tranquilizers are mostly worthless. He'll feel every second of it. Boy, don't give me that look," Hojo, speaking to him now – (what is this? What the hell is this?) – and the pressure building around his right arm exploded suddenly. He couldn't scream anywhere but inside of his mind, but a feeling of completely numb shock overcame him. His nerves did most of the screaming.

"The radius, ulna, and humerus fractured cleanly. The tibia and fibula also snapped, but the break in the femur is uneven. This procedure is risky… if he fails to heal, his growth may end up severely stinted." Gast sounded concerned even as Sephiroth's awareness of the words kept on fading in and out, like he was about to faint but _couldn't._ But that concern was only distant, superseded by knowledge that this was all just an experiment and a low stakes one at that, likely to yield results they had already predicted accurately before hand.

"The boy doesn't fail at anything. He's passed every test with flying colors."

"We're not _testing_ him. This is merely experimental assessment."

"_Memories are interesting. We can erase those we find troublesome, but bring to light some of those you've suppressed and immerse you in them."_

(This has to be an illusion…)

"_We're incapable of breaking you, clearly. But didn't Professor Hojo and Gast slowly break you to pieces, once, when you were just a child? This lurks in your memories, too. We can return you to that moment of utter helplessness without any effort whatsoever. Remember – for you, there is no past, present, nor future. Time does not pass. It is all the same."_

Gast's voice reached him again – now mostly impassive with a bit of awe around the edges. "His bones are healing at roughly three-hundred times the rate of a normal human. He'll retain full mobility in a matter of minutes…"

Hojo just scoffed. "I want it as close to instantaneous as possible. His cells need a higher concentration of undiluted mako."

(…I don't want to remember this.)

The Cetra laughed at him for a long time, before the still images of the lab faded and he toppled onto the ground, suddenly back in the woods outside of Fort Condor and choking again – but instead of mako, something with the consistency of black blood came out of his mouth. For a moment, Sephiroth lingered, fiery, abject rage seething inside of him, threatening to snap what little restraints over his own self-control he had – but self-control was meaningless, because as soon as he let the guard down the Cetra and Jenova were there, whispering in his mind, shouting, filling his insides and crowding his thoughts away, turning his vision to rush of dizziness, Lifestream green, and blurring, fading colors. Finally, the feeling of the world breaking apart and spinning around underneath him faded, and he got back to his feet. Perhaps not thinking was the simplest answer. Perhaps mindless puppetry was preferable –

-- No. Sephiroth forcibly reigned his own thoughts under his control and tried to ignore them, starting back towards camp. This wasn't worth his anger, actually. It was more amusing than anything else – knowing the truth, now certain that the fate of the pathetic, crumbling planet beneath them now relied solely on two ancient forces -- Jenova, and the Cetra -- that were both too _irrevocably _insane to even care if they destroyed the very world over which they fought.

**Author's Notes**

1. I am aware, of course, that some Final Fantasy VII supplementary material said that Jenova wasn't even sentient… but because the original game was unclear on that point, and because this is a fanfic anyway, I'm pretending she is. But I'm not using the old fandom theory that Jenova mind-controlled Sephiroth (…I've never liked that idea, anyway).

2. Next week: No home internet access (we're switching service providers), so I'll be taking a break. Look for Chapter 14 some time around September 26. As always, thanks to everyone who reviewed last chapter.


	14. Chapter 14

**Chapter Fourteen**

A cold blast of wind whipped viciously through the streets of Midgar, and not for the first time, Sephiroth felt the world waver before him. He took a step and paused, peering out over the upper plate and contemplating the deep, building disquiet all around him. Whether the world broke to pieces or not wasn't really a concern of his, but the Cetra seemed to think it should have been. In the entire journey from the crumbled remains of Fort Condor to here they'd given him no more than a few minutes of reprieve. The rest of the time filled with low, incoherent moans and a steady rumbling, the sound of millions of now discordant voices murmuring and disagreeing among themselves.

Beyond the Cetra, another presence lurked. Sephiroth tried not to think about it, not now -- as he walked through the streets of Sector 0, a small cadre of SOLDIERs with him, suspicious and weary eyes followed his every move. It wasn't the time to let his guard down, either in his own head or to the outside world -- with his face plastered all over the papers now, fearful and distrustful gazes followed him wherever he went. That was the first of what was likely to be a multitude of blunders on Rufus' part -- thinking one battle could turn the tide, supplant the rebels and create a new hero. That wasn't the case. Sephiroth barely needed to give the streets of Midgar more than a glance to realize that fear and distrust didn't do a convincing job of hiding revulsion. Shinra, the reactors, SOLDIER, and all of the rest were now oppressors instead of a necessary evil -- and Sephiroth and Rufus were the new faces of a crumbling dictatorship.

Shinra's messes could be left to Rufus. Sephiroth didn't care one way or the other. The mess in his head was another story, though with the new distraction the Cetra didn't seem to be paying much attention to him. Their voices always echoed and intruded on his thoughts, but the crushing heaviness he'd grown accustomed to was gone, replaced by hazy, disjoined fragments. Maybe it should have been a relief, but after he dismissed his unnecessary escort and started on his way through the levels of the Headquarters, Sephiroth realized it was only unnerving.

Not thinking might have been the simplest answer -- no thinking, no more questioning, no more consideration of the situation -- following orders and letting the Cetra and Jenova fight over the pieces of his mind would have been easy, but Sephiroth couldn't be a spectator in his own head, no matter how tempting it was. Mindless puppetry was Cloud's arena, not his.

A building pressure followed by an explosion of pain brought Sephiroth back to reality by the time the elevator hit the fortieth floor. Barely aware he'd even spaced out, he leaned back against the wall for a moment and irritably folded his arms, speaking aloud to the empty space around him and not even caring whether surveillance tapes caught him having a conversation with no one. Most everyone in his surroundings was too terrified to raise the question of his sanity, anyway.

"...It seems like you don't even have a plan, sometimes." He spoke to the Cetra, knowing all the while that Jenova lingered in the recesses of his mind and listened. "If you destroyed my mind, your own indecisiveness would probably kill you."

_"Our actions are not for you to judge or question."_

"It's a little too late to tell me that."

_**"They simply don't understand reality, my child." **_

Sephiroth remained impassive, choosing not to respond to the second voice.

_"The virus cannot be trusted."_

"Neither can you." The elevator door opened, and Sephiroth straightened up and continued through a dark hallway, listening to the Cetra argue among themselves and Jenova's now mostly incoherent whispers. He was more amused than he appalled at how easily he was sidelined in his own head, watching incoherent madness and fear bubble over and poison everything it touched, twisting around his own thoughts and memories into increasingly more unrecognizable pieces -- a gradual, building process, but he knew he couldn't withstand it for long. There wasn't enough room in his head.

There wasn't enough room on this planet for both Jenova and the Cetra, actually. The strangest aspect of this entire hellish situation was that Sephiroth _couldn't _pick a side -- both of them were liars, neither had power over anything except him, and both of their goals were senseless insanity that led only towards utter carnage.

_**"You know the truth, Sephiroth. They are merely using you..."**_

_"...Are you still weak enough to live in the delusion you created? You were never an Ancient. You were never a human. The virus is within you, but it does not control you. You _choose _to believe in its delusions." _

Sephiroth flashed an ID card through a panel on the wall and stepped inside of a humid, darkened room, immediately met by the heavy stench of mako and the sight of twisted machinery, beckoning to old and near-buried memories he consciously chose not to recall. Shadows cast by looming equipment and the glow of consoles guided him through the darkness, around several old pods that housed nothing and into the main experimental laboratory. Given the late hour the lab was empty, all but for one scientist who stood typing something into a console while facing the specimen elevator. A distant revulsion crept over Sephiroth, not unexpectedly -- but coming to this silent laboratory with the benefit of hindsight and the insurance of the Masamune at his side dispelled all but the faintest feelings of apprehension. Again, the Cetra misjudged him -- visions of the past, no matter how vivid they were, weren't enough to break him in the present.

Still, something slithered inside of Sephiroth's mind -- a mix of disgust and discomfort, perhaps, but he didn't want to give it much thought. The single scientist turned and looked at him with those black, beady eyes, the same ones he remembered peering down at him through a thick pair of glasses for so many hundreds of hours and days, while he remained locked in silence and helplessness and his body was carefully constructed into the weapon it was now.

Professor Hojo straightened his glasses and studied him intently, before narrowing his eyes in consideration. "You must be one of the more successful specimens from Project J-2. I suppose it wasn't a waste. What number are you?"

"I have no number," Sephiroth replied, evenly enough. The Cetra were silent now, watching just like Jenova was -- interested in his actions, maybe even unsure where he was headed next.

"No number? You were a failure, then? I'm surprised you weren't disposed. My colleagues have a number of failings, you know, so I can only imagine the pathetic reasons why you were spared." Hojo's voice came out thin, reedy, and a little rushed, exactly like Sephiroth remembered. Just the sound of the man's voice caused something in him to instinctively tense, but Sephiroth remained outwardly poised, cocking his head just a little and studying Hojo with arrogant disdain. After a moment, he realized he was being faced with the same expression -- and one of the more sickening revelations the Cetra had forced him to confront returned to his thoughts. The half of Sephiroth's genetic material that didn't descend from his mother was the Professor's.

"So, tell me. Where did you come from? You aren't one of the escapees from the Nibelheim lab, are you? I can't imagine that either of them would have taken on the appearance of the original specimen, but--"

"--The original specimen died when it was seven, didn't it?" Sephiroth asked, embarking on a sudden sidetrack before really considering it, thinking again of the dual sensation of holding the sword and feeling the sword in his insides. In this world, he'd died at the age of seven -- but there was no way of knowing what had happened afterwards.

"--The original specimen?" Hojo seemed vaguely surprised, then suspicious. "What would you know about that?"

"Rumors travel fast around the company."

"...Of course. There are many petty and foolish creatures working in the lower floors, aren't there?" Hojo asked, before turning back to his console, as if already bored with the conversation. "The original specimen was deconstructed, piece-by-piece, and parts of him were injected into other specimens. I wanted to see if the pieces would make some kind of attempt at reunifying, or if it would have any negative affects on the specimens... surprisingly, it turned out to be quite useful. The specimens in the first batch _were _drawn towards the other pieces of the original specimen."

"...Did Project C receive any material from the original specimen?"

"Bits and pieces, yes. But Project C was a miserable failure." For the second time, Hojo looked at Sephiroth with a hint of interest, his eyes narrowing. "Numbered or not, you seem to have been the most successful specimen so far. Were you from Kalm?"

Sephiroth said nothing, though Hojo detected a hint of something in his expression.

"...I suppose not. Either way, I'm surprised that you took on the appearance of the original specimen. You've even taken to using his name. The idea is scientifically preposterous, but perhaps there is some form of genetic transference of memories through Jenova Cells... but the fact that you're here disproves my original thesis. I would have thought that they'd be drawn towards the main body of Jenova itself..."

The Cetra, revealing yet again that they were far from omniscient, started to chatter, clearly interested, and Sephiroth studied Hojo a moment before speaking again, choosing his words rather carefully. "...The main body isn't here?"

"No. And because of the foolishness of everyone else here, we've probably lost the main body forever, now. Of course, if the reunification theory proves correct, the many specimens out there with material from the original specimen will be drawn to it anyway." Hojo studied Sephiroth again, even more interested. "I'd like to analyze a sample from you. Step into the specimen elevator."

Sephiroth stopped considering the implications of Hojo's words long enough to give the Professor a dismissive and obviously disdainfully incredulous look. Hojo, who wore the same expression far more often than not, narrowed his eyes in irritation.

"I suppose there's no way to get you to cooperate, is there? That's unfortunate. Why did you come here, anyway? If you want to know, it probably won't be very long before you become criminally insane and unusable. The specimens from Kalm were close, and the experiments from Town B messily self-destructed less than a week after they were originally altered. They make decent weapons for a while, but they're very unstable. You were more successful than most, but I'd imagine you'll lose your self-control and sense of identity within a few days. It happens to all of them," Hojo's ramblings came out matter-of-factly, uncaring to as whether Sephiroth bothered to follow along or not. "You may as well prove useful while you still can. I only need a small sample."

"Fine. Just so long as you analyze it right away." In reality, this was the reason why he was here -- and both the Cetra and Jenova waited in interest, obviously aware of what the results were going to be. He had an idea, too -- and kept a close eye on Hojo all the while as he stuck his hand in one of the many machines, felt a small sharp stab on one of his fingers, and withdrew it a moment later. Hojo typed something into his console and studied it closely while Sephiroth waited, leaning against the wall and trying to hide his irritation with the situation. Finally, Hojo turned towards him, now looking almost excited.

"This is most interesting... I've never seen this occur in any of the specimens. The mako content in your cells seems to have regained the original properties of the Lifestream from which it was derived..."

"What about the Jenova cells?"

"...They're attempting to reject the mako. It's almost as if the J-Cells are posing as a fake immune system... and the rate at which it's happening seems to suggest that the Jenova cells are successfully eliminating the mako..."

"And if that happens, then what?"

"Oh, the cells in your body will most likely rupture and burst, I'd say," Hojo still used the same matter-of-fact tone, though he now looked at Sephiroth with a renewed interest. "The Jenova cells will then stage a takeover of all your bodily systems, but without the mako's added healing properties, the reaction would most likely be fatal. It will be an excruciatingly painful process. After that, the remains would dissipate unless properly sealed and returned to the main body."

"I see." Sephiroth felt it, now -- the Cetra's quiet unease and Jenova's whispers, mingling into a growing disquiet, the calm before the storm. Then the Cetra began laughing, one by one and finally becoming immense cacophony, muted, yet still intense enough to nearly bowl him over. The professor adjusted his glasses, studied the look on Sephiroth's face, and actually seemed unashamedly disappointed.

"I suppose you don't want that process to take place, do you? Petty, insignificant specimens such as yourself always cling to what little sense of identity they have, even if it destroys them..." Hojo scowled. "In order to prevent the Jenova cells from destroying your bodily systems, you'll need regular mako injections. The showers simply won't be enough. Direct, intravenous injection of pure, undiluted mako will do the trick, although you should know that direct injections often have severe side-effects." Disappointment faded quickly. The Professor was clearly delighted by this whole situation -- and in a moment of irony Sephiroth knew he was the only one in the universe to recognize, the Cetra were thrilled, now, too.

The pieces were coming together. Sephiroth actually smiled, hiding anger with amusement as the presences in his head awaited his reaction.

(I was right to reject you this time, Jenova. You don't want to find the Promised Land. You just want your cells back where they belong. I'm only surprised you weren't more subtle about it. Here I was, thinking your power was insufficient... but I suppose I'm one who disappointed you, right?)

The lurking presence in his mind didn't respond, but he felt it now -- building disquiet mingled with something deeper and more sinister, a predator about to make its move and now thwarted at the last instant. The Cetra laughed but their voices were discordant, some murmuring in concern and others silent even among the laughter, contemplating the choice he was about to make. Still, a ringing voice, louder than the rest -- the full might of most of the Cetra behind it -- continued to laugh at him.

_"The virus has nothing to offer you except lies. What we seek is the future." _

Sephiroth said nothing, already anticipating what came next -- and sure enough, the Cetra's voice collided with his thoughts with nearly enough force to shatter his mind, even with the mako in his body rotting away like it was now.

_"But for you, there is no future. You are either ours, or you are nothing. Should your body reject its mako, you will rot. You will never obtain freedom."_

"How long will this process take?" Sephiroth asked, interrupting the voices in his head and turning his attention back to Hojo, who watched him with sudden and unguarded enthusiasm, thinking in purely scientific terms and obviously finding Sephiroth to be the most engaging specimen he'd encountered in quite a while -- though still hardly worthy of consideration, because the usual self-confident disdain still remained written all over Hojo's face.

"I'd estimate a month, at most, without intervention. But if you allow me to inject mako directly into your bloodstream--"

"--If it's just an injection that's needed, any scientist on the continent can do it." Sephiroth cut Hojo off before he continued.

"The others will do inferior work, and if you have any kind of severe reaction--"

"--Don't kid yourself." Sephiroth gave Hojo his own best flatly dismissive look, realizing all the while it was something he'd probably inherited from the man even with all of the genetic tinkering. "Even if you created me, you were always an inferior scientist to Gast, anyway."

That gave the Professor pause. He watched the man's eyes narrow through his glasses before turning away, not particularly caring how many questions he left behind him. Sephiroth re-entered the elevator without a word and leaned against the wall, folding his arms and hearing the Cetra chatter away inside of him while Jenova watched, now more amused than ever. Always helpful and eager to send fresh doubts through his head in a constant effort to push Sephiroth towards the breaking point, the Cetra prodded at him.

_"You should understand now that there is no choice for you. Free will is entirely an illusion. Should you defy our plans, you will merely rot and die. Your body might attempt to make it back to Jenova... but your consciousness will vanish. But even that will not be the end. Our hold on you will still remain."_

Sephiroth cringed and grabbed his forehead, the movement almost entirely subconscious, before choking on more acidic, burning mako surging up from the back of his throat. Jenova, still just a whisper in his head but growing stronger with each passing hour, murmured a response meant for him alone, faking sympathy even as dizziness nearly overwhelmed him again.

_**"Their words are nothing more than lies... you will live again as part of me."**_

"I'd rather keep it the other way around," Sephiroth finally allowed just a hint of irritation in his tone, even knowing such self-control was meaningless when both forces inside of his head saw that he was seething with rage. "...Both of you are liars, anyway. You'll say whatever you feel is necessary, but I don't believe any of it."

_**"...But I will always be your Mother."**_

Lifestream suddenly appeared out of nowhere, rushing in Sephiroth's field of vision and reaching towards him, circling around his limbs and pulling him into nothingness. The Cetra's voice echoed hollowly in his head, though every word fell like a death knell, almost unbearable enough to shatter his resolve never to let them break him again. Sephiroth gritted his teeth and closed his eyes, feeling the sensation of endless falling again, through a mix of black and Lifestream green, no longer sure whether or not he was still in the HQ Elevator.

_"Further alterations in the flow of time are required. It seems we must open your eyes to reality, too. No matter how much you delude yourself, the truth is unchanging."_

Sephiroth hit the ground roughly, hard enough to knock his breath away completely. Seconds later he went rolling, slipping right off the edge of a precipice and hitting water in one dizzying rush. Sephiroth kicked towards what he hoped was the surface and broke through the surface, treading water and scowling in irritation before wading towards a rocky shoreline.

He didn't recognize his surroundings at all. He gazed up the tall walls of an immense crater surrounding a silent lake that reflected the night sky above. The air bit into his lungs, cool and crisp, and in the few short minutes he stood looking around a rime of frost appeared on his wet clothes. A short distance away a narrow waterfall fell down from the crater rim, hundreds of feet above.

"Where is this?" The silent night didn't respond, but the Cetra rumbled, now sounding measured and patient again.

_"You will fulfill one of our objectives here. You will also find truth."_

"You're not any more capable of recognizing truth than I am." His voice echoed hollowly in the silent night, and with no response, he almost felt foolish. Thankfully, Sephiroth was alone. He walked along the shore of the small lake, one hand on the hilt of his sword, irritated and yet darkly curious to as what lied in store for him. Surely, more nonsensical orders and sadism waited somewhere -- He expected no less from the Cetra -- but with Jenova whispering in his mind, too, he had the feeling whatever task he had in store was going to be interesting. Faced with the prospect of his body rotting away and becoming part of whatever dying husk was left of Jenova, or pumping more mako into his body and feeling the _presence _of the Cetra in every cell, Sephiroth's anger faded into amusement again, and he thought maybe sitting back and simply laughing at the absurdity of it all was the only response he could muster. Little acts of rebellion and pathetic attempts at refusal were meaningless now, not when his body was self-destructing.

The cool air tasted familiar. Sephiroth guessed he was somewhere on the west continent, probably within the Nibel Mountains -- near the ruins of Nibelheim, Strife's responsibility. Cloud may have remembered, but Sephiroth wondered if it had occurred to him yet, that Hojo hadn't just inserted Jenova cells into his body. He didn't know the other man's mindset at all, and didn't really care, but perhaps the knowledge of where the cells now in his body had came from would be enough to drive him towards madness, if he wasn't already there. The man who had destroyed Nibelheim and ripped the reactor from the ground probably didn't quite have the benefit of a fully sane mind. The Cetra, intently focused on Sephiroth's thoughts, started murmuring among themselves again, adding to the growing pressure in Sephiroth's head.

"I'm still wondering what your plan for Cloud is." He remarked, after a few moments of walking along the shore. The falls loomed before him, and he was now close enough to see that a small cavern stretched into the inky black behind the curtain of water. "You want both of us to rip the world in half, I know. But shouldn't you be worried? A part of me is within him... what if I tried to control him again?"

_"You are the one being controlled. You do not have the capability to control others. We will not allow it."_ The Cetra knocked him to the ground so easily he barely had time to think, but Sephiroth lurched to his feet easily, tasting blood in his mouth now and feeling dizzy again. Knowing his body was rotting away put things in perspective. The dizziness, he imagined, would probably reside if he pumped his veins full of undiluted mako. But even if Hojo had lovingly constructed a working and damn near indestructible weapon out of his body, piece-by-piece, Sephiroth knew there were limits -- there were _always _limits.

"...You're controlling me... but you're also depending on me," Sephiroth leaned against the crater wall for a moment, regaining the breath he'd lost upon hitting the ground as the Cetra rumbled angrily in his head and Jenova _watched_, like always. "...What if I let my body rot away?"

_"Would you really submit to the Virus so easily?"_

"...Maybe. If I have a choice between the two--"

_"A creature as foolish and stubbornly willful as you isn't capable of submission. You'd rather keep fighting until every cell in your body ruptures. The mere idea of becoming a mindless puppet to any power is revolting to you." _

"You still haven't answered my question."

Sephiroth already knew the Cetra answered the same way, every time -- and a sudden intense burst of green in his vision followed by a slow, steady burn ripped through his left arm, lacing from the fingertips to the elbow and intensifying until it distracted him from even continuing to move. Sephiroth paused and clutched his arm with his other hand, trying to banish the image of the skin cracking to pieces from his mind before it nauseated him, then slowly pushed the sleeve upwards and pulled off the glove, his movements jerky. Purpling bruises spread from his fingers, across his palm, and all the way up his forearm, oozing blood that looked black in the dim light from the stars above. The skin itself was cold to the touch, and when he pressed his hand against one of the darker bruises just below his wrist, the skin really did _crack_, sending a wave of pain blazing through his nerves and blood spilling on the rocky ground beneath him. Sephiroth stared at his arm for a long time in silence, surprised and even a little appalled to find that the pain made breathing difficult.

_"Dizziness and nausea are just the beginning. The process will be excruciatingly slow. The pain will be constant. And we will still use you, regardless -- even if your skin is sloughing away from your body and your bones are crumbling inside of you, you are still an effective weapon. You will go insane before your body rots completely. Without any mental barriers, you'd be much easier to control."_

_**"...in the end, you can be reborn through me..."**_

_"But whatever sense of self you have will be lost, and we will reclaim you, anyway." _

Sephiroth started dredging up some memory that slowly pieced together right before the Cetra reached in and snatched it away, leaving a white haze in its place. But he understood, now -- there was nothing in his memories capable of saving him, nor was there any escape. Everything in his mind existed only as fragments of a world that no longer existed.

"The only real option I have is destroying both of you," Sephiroth finally ventured.

_"But you are powerless."_

The pain shot from his elbow to his shoulder and nearly blinded him, causing Sephiroth to stumble. Hojo's estimate of a month was generous -- at this rate, Sephiroth doubted he'd last a week. The Cetra probed into his mind and laughed at him again, some of their voices uncaringly sadistic, others forcing laughter to hide their unease. This time, though, Sephiroth couldn't even gain any satisfaction from knowing the Cetra were unnerved.

_"To resist us is to give in to the Virus, and succumb to ruin even more quickly... but this time, we won't force your hand. We will give you a true choice between our future and Jenova's. Keep going." _

Sephiroth's gaze fell on the waterfall again, and he continued, shuffling along the narrow shore and making his way towards the cavern behind the falls, trying to clench and unclench his left hand the entire time and feeling the nerves barely respond and the skin continue to crack, staining his hand with blood. He tried to close his fingers around the hilt of his sword and cringed, before forcing his body to keep moving through the darkness, trying not to think. He entered a cavern and passed behind the falls, the water misting his clothes and leaving unpleasant dampness that only worsened the aching in his arm. Halfway through the narrow tunnel he spotted a light ahead and walked faster, still fighting nausea and feeling almost drawn towards whatever waited at the back of the cavern.

Finally, he stumbled into the open, surprised to see the light came merely from moonlight streaming through cracks in the cavern roof reflecting off the surface of mako, inch-deep all over the cavern and bubbling from a rift in the ground in the corner. Sephiroth stepped in it and stopped, clutching his arm and now feeling uncertain. The boiling Lifestream congealing around his boots and burning in his lungs made the Cetra's presence even more oppressive, but Jenova's whispers grew louder, too, an endless litany of soothing lies and veiled threats, more subtle than the Cetra and yet more dangerous all the same, inexorably a part of him he could never eliminate. Sephiroth took a step forwards and saw movement, then realized he was looking at the pathetic form of some ragged woman in a mako-soaked white lab coat, sitting on the only surface not coated by mako and clutching something in her arms, rocking back and forth spasmodically.

Sephiroth stopped a few feet away, and her eyes jerked up -- over bright with the glare of mako, but even more tainted by complete and utter madness. Her voice emerged in a breathless rush, a murmur Sephiroth barely heard even in the eerie silence of the cavern. "Stay away... don't take him from me... stay away from us... I have to hold him..."

Closer now, he saw the thing in the woman's arms and stopped with a jolt, recognizing it immediately. Rocking back and forth, obliviously, the woman clutched it tightly and half-recoiled, the madness in her eyes entering her voice now, too. "Stay away! He... he's my son... I never got to hold him... just let me hold him..."

Jenova's presence was now nothing more than an icy silence in his head. Sephiroth narrowed his eyes, slowly, staring at the woman as she clutched a piece of Jenova to her like a child and stared at him distrustfully, her face growing wilder by the second. Something about that face beckoned to some fragment in his memories, but the ugly black tentacle she seemed to think was a child writhed and Sephiroth came to the sudden realization.

(...Strife... Cloud did it. Jenova was still in Nibelheim, wasn't she? And when Cloud destroyed the reactor, her pieces ended up disseminating through the Lifestream. No wonder he terrifies you... his actions can derail your plans entirely, can't they?)

The Cetra rumbled but didn't give him any kind of response, and Sephiroth looked back at the woman, knowing he hadn't drawn the right conclusion, not yet -- even if it was probably impossible, there was some insight to be gained from the mad woman sitting before him. Aside from the writhing tentacle, something she'd probably gained right from the fountain of Lifestream, there were other things in the cavern. Ignoring her completely Sephiroth knelt and picked up a few sodden papers from the ground, sifting through them and finding notes with the barest semblance of scientific intent, mostly inane ramblings, scattered all around her. Most were unreadable but all were incoherent, leading Sephiroth to study the woman again.

"...do... Do you want to hold him...? He's beautiful, isn't he?" The woman asked, her eyes widening, holding the tentacle out towards him. "...Just... don't hurt him... don't make him cry... he's perfect... he'll grow up and save everyone... we named him Sephiroth."

He took a step back this time, unnerved. (What is this?)

Asking the Cetra usually never yielded a response, but now they were all too eager to explain themselves. _"Hojo thinks of you as the original Jenova Project specimen... but that's untrue. The woman who gave birth to you was injected with the cells, too, and once you were born, she was discarded... left to die somewhere in the woods, but the Virus does not succumb so easily. You are aware of this, certainly."_

"...I thought..." Sephiroth began, then paused, frowning, surprised by his own sudden hesitation. Jenova's slowly building anger added to his dizziness, but he clutched his rotting arm and reined the feelings back under control before part of him cracked, too. "...You called me Jenova's child once, too. It's strange, how you lie and deceive at will and expect me to believe you're any better than _she _is."

_"Some deceptions are necessary. But do you see what has become of this woman? She, too, is rotting away, slowly. Her sanity is irretrievable. This is the fate of all who succumb to Jenova..."_

"Those who lack willpower, maybe. But she never had any control over me. Not like _this_." Sephiroth stared down at the woman, no longer clear just how to react to any of this and trying to suppress the building pain in his arm.

_"Supposedly not. And for that reason, you were once dangerous... but no longer. Our control over you is too complete, and rejecting our control means you will rot."_

"Your voice..." The woman's mutterings interrupted both Sephiroth's thoughts and the Cetra. Her eyes were upon him, now, with a kind of focus they'd lacked just moments before. "...I dream sometimes... I hear your voice... are you...? Are you my son...? Are you Sephiroth...?" The tentacle slipped from her arms, forgotten, and the woman was up suddenly, taking a step and swaying, reaching towards him with skeletal fingers. "...I never got to hold you..."

"Don't touch me," Sephiroth recoiled, though the impulse to turn and leave this meaningless insanity behind him faded long enough to actually look at the woman, now unnerved by her features because he did see something of himself in them, reflected back at him even if she was ravaged by illness, mako poisoning, and her own madness. All the while Sephiroth had believed in a lie, but with the face of his pathetic and obviously human mother before him, he realized he had believed only because he had chosen the lie over the truth -- but there _hadn't_ been a choice.

_"You had to take this Planet back for your mother, right? Jenova's power to deceive wasn't strong enough, but you were always best at deceiving yourself. You consciously chose to believe a lie... and for all that happened afterwards, your punishment could be eternal and still not suffice." _The Cetra's utter contempt for him had never been more apparent, and he felt the stabbing pains lacing through his shoulder now, as the skin bruised and cracked, rapidly, pain worsening as the effort of drawing each breath became a struggle.

"...My son... I'm glad to finally meet you... and I'm sorry... I..." The woman murmured, before madness took hold of her in a rush and Jenova's whispers became blindingly loud, burning through his mind. As if possessed the woman leapt towards him, now no longer human and almost _entirely _Jenova, speed and strength inhuman in a human shell, belying her frail appearance. Sephiroth didn't move, forcing himself to remain right where he was -- until instinct finally took over amidst a blinding flash of green. Equally skilled with the sword using either hand, he ignored his rotting left arm and drew with the right, feeling the slight _give _as vulnerable flesh parted easily beneath solid steel. For a moment, the Lifestream roared in his ears and green flooded his vision, before finally, all sensations receded.

The woman had the slightest smile on her face, but it faded, slowly, as the mako in her eyes receded. Sephiroth just stared at her in silence.

_"You will be the one that succumbs to the virus, this time. In the end, you will be no different than this woman. She is your real mother -- a mindless puppet to the Jenova cells inside of her. But even if you do end up like your mother, we can always reconstruct you. Simply fading into the Lifestream is not an option. She came here to do the same, and this is the fate she found."_

Sephiroth remained silent, but before he could even think of a response the soft patter of purposely light footsteps at the entrance to the cavern alerted him. He whirled around, placing the body on the ground in a single careful move and withdrawing his sword, hearing the discharge of rifle fire and feeling a bullet sink into his left shoulder, ripping away flesh with it and going straight through the limb. A second later Sephiroth moved, letting the speed of his unknown opponent take him by surprise only for a split second before slipping his sword through their shoulder and pinning them to the wall, already eerily aware that the bullet wound wasn't healing at anything close to the usual rate. Pinned to the wall by the Masamune, a strange man with blood red eyes and a pale face stared at him, equally unbothered by the sword in his shoulder but motionless, barely breathing.

Sephiroth dimly recognized him -- another one of Cloud's former companions from a timeline that no longer mattered. He barely knew the man's name, but he had definitely been there at the end, fighting with Cloud and all the rest. For him to be here now made even less sense, but Sephiroth supposed he was connected, somehow, to the dead woman now lying on the floor behind them.

"I suppose you knew her," Sephiroth began, forcing steadiness into his voice even as searing pains in his arm nearly blinded him. "...It's Vincent, isn't it?"

"...That woman is Lucrecia," Vincent's voice came out flatly, but anger flickered through his eyes, so sudden and intense it nearly overwhelmed his otherwise expressionless visage -- something monstrous lurked within -- but then the fiery hint of anger faded and the man's gaze became icy. "...You killed her."

"... I put her out of her misery."

Another flash of anger -- and it subsided a little more slowly this time, though the man could do little. Sephiroth kept his gun-arm pinned to the wall, and planned on killing him if he so much as showed any sign of something unusual. "...You must be Sephiroth, then. Hojo and Lucrecia's son..." For a long time, Vincent remained silent, before suddenly his voice no longer held much of anything except the faintest trace of regret. "Did she recognize you?"

"...She was completely insane."

"...I understand what Cloud meant. She came here to die, in a place where the Jenova cells inside of her couldn't affect anyone else... but I can see the look on her face. I can only hope she was glad to see that her son survived."

Sephiroth considered killing Vincent, for some reason -- a completely unexpected impulse, awakened by some emotion that broke loose of the otherwise tight self-controls over his own feelings. A moment later, he tightened his grip on his sword and withdrew it, leaving Vincent to slump down into a sitting position, one hand -- a metallic claw -- going up to pressure the wound even as it healed swiftly. Vincent was another of Hojo's creations, doubtlessly. That explained why he'd been fast enough to get a shot off, but it didn't explain his eerie calm about the situation.

"She never had the chance to hold you, even though you were her son... seeing your face might have helped. I can only imagine." Vincent's blood-red eyes rose to Sephiroth, studying him intently. "...Cloud said you died when you were younger. Clearly, that's not the case."

"It's the truth," Sephiroth replied, unnerved by the Cetra's silence. "What else did Cloud tell you?"

Vincent only looked at Sephiroth, and narrowed his eyes slightly.

"Either way, you should probably kill Cloud," Sephiroth suggested, finally. "He just might let you do it, especially if he remembers. Otherwise, the Cetra's plan will succeed. They don't even have to lift a finger against him, so long as he's stupid enough to play right into their plans--" Sephiroth said the words even knowing it sounded like madness, and the Cetra began roaring inside of him while the skin on his left arm cracked and blood oozed out, soaking his sleeve. Vincent moved as soon as Sephiroth seemed distracted, lifting his gun with his claw and aiming it right at Sephiroth's forehead, his movements easily as fast as a SOLDIER's. Sephiroth felt the Cetra knock him aside as the bullet grazed his cheek, then slashed Vincent, leaving the other man to tumble to the ground with a gaping wound right before tendrils of Lifestream shot up and took hold of his limbs, dragging him back through the darkness. Sephiroth fell to his knees, choking. On the ground, Vincent looked up at him with gritted teeth and a tightly-controlled look on his face, spitting out blood and managing to speak while the woman -- Lucrecia -- lied dead and with a serene smile on her face.

"Cloud will probably be the one to kill you, if I don't do it first."

"--Fine. So long as it disrupts _their _plans, Cloud can kill me. I don't think it will work, though." A brief hint of surprise appeared on Vincent's before expressionless face, but everything vanished a moment later, leaving Sephiroth caught up again in the sensation of falling through endless darkness, possibly through time, as well. Flashes of green appeared before his vision. His arm seared. The roar of the Cetra blocked out almost every other sensation, until finally, he slammed into the ground and rolled, breath leaving as his lungs crumbled with the force. A few moments later, the green receded and he straightened up, barely aware of his surroundings.

_"You should have a clearer understanding of your punishment, now."_

Sephiroth looked around blearily. The Cetra hadn't thrown him backwards or forwards in time, just sideways, somehow using the Lifestream to transplant him from one place to another -- tossing him around like a meaningless pawn, uncaringly, and knowing all the while his ability to resist was fading.

_"Now, go. You can cooperate, or you can lie here while the rest of your mind and body rots. It's your decision."_

"...It's my decision...?" Sephiroth repeated, incredulously -- and finally, he choked on more mako and laughed as he did, still aware of Jenova's whisperings inside of him and realizing that there was no real decision to make, in the eyes of the Cetra. It was funny -- undeniably funny, even if no one had ever really taught him when the right time to laugh was – and as Sephiroth lay choking and laughing at the absurdity of the situation he wondered if his brain was already rotting, too.

"...It's you..."

A voice interrupted him, breaking in just before his mind broke itself to pieces. The Cetra had savagely tossed him somewhere, a small yard surrounded by the deadened stench of Midgar's upper plate. It was early morning, here. A few feet away at the base of a small mound of deadened flowers, the last living Cetra sat staring at him like he was a ghost, an odd mix of almost-fear and definite curiosity on her face.

**

* * *

**

The elders of Cosmo Canyon were senseless old geezers, Yuffie decided, some fifteen miles up the road from the town. Geezers were the same the world over. They indecisively sat around advising everyone to be cautious and took eons to make decisions, and they all had the same stupid habit of assuming that they were actually capable of understanding things they had no clue about just because they were _old_.

Yuffie didn't quite buy that. There were no elders with her now, thankfully, as she crouched in the trees and carefully watched the activities at some old Shinra base below. Fifteen of her ninja were with her, though, clutching their weapons and barely daring to breathe, ready to move as soon as she gave the signal. The problem with the old men was that they really didn't understand -- Wutain Shinobi weren't the sort to sit and wait for the battle to come to them, especially now that Shinra had some kind of terrible new weapon capable of wiping out the idiots at Fort Condor in a single day.

A cold breeze stirred up after some five minutes passed, and Yuffie crouched low, preparing to give the signal, watching the three or four sentries pacing around on the wall with sharp eyes and forced patience. Despite the fact that this outpost was little and backwoods, it was currently the holding place for a decent store of materia, and if they were going to do anything, they _needed_ it. The old geezers back at the canyon thought these little raids were worthless, and it was risky splitting their fighting forces in half just to get their hands on some materia -- but they just didn't get it. Yuffie wasn't stupid, or at least not as stupid as they thought she was. If they even had a dream of holding Cosmo Canyon, they needed every little piece of Materia they could get their hands on.

Of course, she understood the real reason why they thought she was stupid -- the Princess, the figurehead that drew all the Wutains together, wasn't supposed to be out on the front lines, risking her life on a materia raid. But that was only because they didn't understand -- all the caution in the world hadn't saved the old man who had once been Wutai's emperor. Yuffie's grip around her shuriken tightened and she prepared to give the signal to move, seeing that the sentries were now facing the other direction, and --

-- too late. A confusing blur of motion followed by a sudden explosion shocked Yuffie so badly she nearly fell out of the tree. Something darted towards one of the walls. The wall exploded, blasted inwards by some inhuman strength, and the sentries came running and fell dead in another rush, faster than Yuffie's eyes could follow. The other Ninja tensed, watching with flat-out stupidly shocked looks on their faces, and Yuffie only glanced at them before turning back to the base. Another explosion, and one of the inside walls fell inwards. A few shouts, and a few surprised and terrified screams followed by the ugly noise of bones crunching and a flash of insanely powerful materia magic broke the silence of the night before everything went quiet again, leaving the same still, late autumn evening as before.

Self-control had never been Yuffie's strong point. Whatever was going down inside that little Shinra outpost was probably nothing they needed to take part in, but then again, the same lack of self-control that led Yuffie to leap right out of the branches without even signaling to the rest of the Ninja had also gained them their geezer allies back in Cosmo Canyon, and as annoying as they were, they did have a lot of good weapons and Materia. Yuffie vaulted from the trees to the top of the base's crumbling outer wall, then down into the courtyard, drawing her weapon and wondering just what kind of monster she was about to meet. Three of her ninja followed. The rest lingered silently in the trees and waited, watching carefully and ready to move if necessary.

Everyone wearing Shinra colors was dead, now -- the sentries, the troopers, a few SOLDIERs, amounting to about twenty bodies sprawled motionlessly on the ground. One SOLDIER in a first-class uniform laid pinned by a gigantic, gleaming white sword, a weapon wider than Yuffie and doubtlessly about three times as heavy, she imagined, though its owner was nowhere to be seen. Probably inside the fort -- and for the first time in years, Yuffie actually had a moment of doubt while considering what kind of overcompensating inhuman freak was actually capable of using a sword like that. Maybe, just _maybe_, she didn't actually want to meet said monster.

Before she had second thoughts, though, a man stepped out of the base, walking at a casual pace, seemingly oblivious to the carnage around him. He saw Yuffie right away and paused, and she felt something inside of her snap. She didn't make any proclamations this time -- no time to announce the arrival of the great ninja Yuffie, not when there was killing to be done. Yuffie charged, darting inwards and preparing to sink her shuriken into his skull and end it right away -- but the man didn't even draw a weapon. He side-stepped her attack, almost casually, but Yuffie thought she saw his eyes widen just a bit when she whirled around and flung her shuriken right at his head and almost had him between the eyes for a split second -- before he practically faded from view, and suddenly the gleaming white sword broke the ground to pieces in the place she'd been standing. Yuffie leapt back and fell into a fighting crouch, waiting, gritting her teeth and feeling the blood rush in her head and her heart pounding so hard it almost hurt. The SOLDIER just stood there looking at her, and slowly, the rage receded.

Same glowing eyes -- but the color was different underneath the unreal mako gleam, and this man was different, not the SOLDIER she'd sworn to kill. His uniform was just a standard SOLDIER outfit, and so worn it looked threadbare in some places. He didn't seem bothered at all by the carnage around him, but Yuffie didn't have to do any kind of mental calculations to figure out that he was the one who'd caused it.

"That's the stupidest hair-do I've ever seen," she finally announced, going for false bravado even though she felt sick. To her surprise, though, he just looked at her for a moment, before changing the subject.

"...You're here for the materia. Right, Yuffie?"

"...That's GREAT-NINJA Yuffie to you. And how the hell do you know my name, chocobo-head? I sure as hell don't know you."

He shook his head, just a bit. "I dunno. You're the Princess, right? The one in all the papers?"

"Yeah. That's me. What the hell do you want?"

After an awkward silence spent staring at one another -- Yuffie suspicious, the SOLDIER nonchalant -- he shrugged.

"...I saw you and the others. Looked like you were gonna raid this base, I guess. There's some good materia here."

"Yeah. And it's all mine. If you want it, you're gonna have to fight me for it!"

"...That's fine. I don't need it."

Yuffie just looked at him for a few moments, before scowling. "Well, you're not any fun. What's the big deal, then? You're butting in. We coulda taken this one."

"...Sorry." He didn't sound apologetic. "...I saw you in the trees. I figured you could handle it, but... I could do it quicker."

"What the hell's the deal with you, anyway? Are you some kind of psycho or something? What's with that sword?" Yuffie felt like they were talking without really communicating, somehow. The SOLDIER just looked at her for a moment before turning towards the little base, his expression bored.

"This place isn't important... no one will miss it. Same with Nibelheim, actually... it was just a place for rejects and side projects. If it'd really mattered to any of them, I couldn't have taken it down so easily."

"What are you on about? Slow down, chocobo-head. What's this about Nibelheim? Were you--"

"--I did it." He didn't sound proud of it, either. Yuffie just stared, realizing now that even if they were communicating, it was at a pace much too quick for her brain to comprehend. His words came out like totally inane rambling, but a moment later, she dropped back into a crouch again, suddenly distrustful. You didn't have to be an old geezer to realize chocobo-headed SOLDIERs with weapons bigger than they were called for some actual common sense and caution.

"You say you're the one who took the Nibel Reactor out? Are you kidding? You and what army?"

"That one," he motioned towards his sword. Yuffie stared at him long enough to realize he was being dead serious -- then burst out laughing, actually startling him. When she finished, she shook her head.

"Ha-ha. No way. Are you crazy or something?"

He gave another careless shrug, but a second later he saw something funny about the situation, too. A ghost of a smirk passed over his otherwise bland features, though it didn't do much to soften the unreal creepiness of his glaring blue mako-tainted eyes. "...I probably am...But I've gotta be to fight against them, I guess."

"You mean the Shinra?"

"Wanna help?" He asked, so suddenly it startled her -- and in a moment of unusually deep self-introspection, Yuffie thought that maybe she was a little impetuous, because while she'd sworn multiple times to her father's grave and all the gods she knew that she was going to be the one who killed the silver-haired SOLDIER and every bastard who'd ever set foot in Wutai, this SOLDIER didn't seem quite as offensive as the rest. She wasn't so sure he was a SOLDIER at all, actually. "I heard you've got an army of ninja following you."

"...You heard wrong. There are a bunch of stupid rumors flying around. There are only about three hundred of us, plus the fifteen here. And there's only about fifty guys capable of fighting back at Cosmo Canyon, but they do help a bit with materia and stuff. They hate the Shinra too, ya know. But don't get me wrong! I'm worth at least a thousand ninja, and every ninja's worth about forty Shinra," Yuffie boasted, as confidently as she could manage. It was insanely stupid bravado and she knew it, but the ghost of a smile that passed across his face was neither mocking nor sarcastic. Maybe his eyes said otherwise, but at a glance, he didn't look like a bad guy.

"...I wanted to take something from the Shinra... but I don't think I can do it on my own. Not this time," Chocobo-Head said. "...Help me out with something, and you can probably get really good materia."

Yuffie looked at the Chocobo-Head -- a guy she'd just met, a SOLDIER and a crazy one to boot, the sort of person capable of carrying around a monstrous slab of metal like it was nothing and massacring a medium-sized Shinra outpost in under twenty seconds -- and abruptly tossed caution, common sense and the rest of that garbage right to the wind.

"Tell me more, chocobo-head. What's this about materia?"

Another ghost of a smile flitted across his face. This one seemed a little eerie and unhinged, but it didn't belie the suddenly forceful look in his eyes. "Reactors usually have strong materia."

"Uh, yeah, they do. But, uh, wouldn't you need an army to do that?"

He shrugged again, tapped the hilt of his sword, and she thought his creepy eyes looked just a little brighter than before. "...I've got one right here."

All stupid bravado except her own usually did nothing more than piss Yuffie off, but this time she smiled and decided on an impulse that it made her like him even more.

**Author's notes**

1. ...Okay, weekly updates are now a thing of the past. I'm going to try for bi-weekly instead. Sorry guys, but I'm swamped with stuff to do for work, and that has to take precedence over this.

2. Anyway, next update: Sephiroth and Aerith, destruction and carnage, Cloud and Yuffie. Look for it in about two weeks.

Like always, thanks for the reviews!


	15. Chapter 15

**Chapter Fifteen **

Aerith sat and stared, clutching her trowel so tightly in one hand that her fingers started to hurt, too surprised to even form rational thoughts. Somewhere in the space between utter bewilderment and fright, though, she found enough sense to slowly lower the gardening implement and clear her throat slightly.

No more than a couple yards away, the silver-haired man -- the one who had saved her from Hojo's lab the first time, all those years ago in Nibelheim -- laid on his side, surrounded by the effervescent green glow of Lifestream. He shifted slightly, and over the span of a few fleeting seconds, she spotted something odd on his face. Whatever it was vanished too quickly for her to identify and then he was in a sitting position, staring at her speechlessly. Aerith swallowed.

Thirty or forty awkward seconds ticked by, before finally, he broke the silence.

"I killed you."

"Yeah. So I've heard."

His statement and her rejoinder hung lazily in the air between them, as outlandish as it they were matter-of-factly delivered. Aerith studied him in the midst of the silence, taking the time to carefully choose her words and take note of his condition. His clothes were sodden, long cloak and pants alike, and his boots encrusted with mud. She doubted he'd just taken a recreational swim. There were thin, drying dark red streaks on his sword.

"You know," Aerith said, finding the silence almost unbearable. "You're not the first guy to end up unconscious in my flower garden. It's how I met Zack, actually."

Sephiroth just sat for a moment and stared at her, before abruptly getting to his feet and sheathing his sword without bothering to wipe it off, an oddly careless gesture. His Lifestream-eyes and inscrutable expression were frightening even now, with the tiny flower petals clinging to his wet clothes. He was a frightening individual, Aerith knew, capable of scaring the Planet into silence and driving her ancestors into a frenzy -- and yet even knowing the Planet and Ancients feared him for a reason, Aerith couldn't summon up the motivation to be scared.

"They showed you, did they?" He asked, finally, his tone as flat as the look in his eyes, though she thought she detected a small token of amusement in his voice as soon as he continued. "Did they tell you why?"

"They... they didn't. But then, I guess I didn't ask, either." Aerith tried to shrug, nonchalantly, but the gesture failed, instead turning into an uncomfortable shudder. "They only showed me."

"It was the city of Ancients, on the northernmost continent." His mouth twisted into a thin smirk. "You knew you were going into danger, but you didn't care. The Cetra guided you there, and you thought all the while they'd continue protecting you. But they knew the danger was much greater than you could have understood... and they kept on guiding you, right up until your death. It's almost like it was a desired outcome."

"That's strange. What's even stranger is that you're talking about it like it's already happened."

"Because it has. I killed you. I remember the day perfectly."

Making the assumption that he wasn't completely insane was itself insanity, but the fact that Aerith just looked at him and took his words at face value must have been irritating to him. The trace of a smirk vanished from his face as soon as Aerith replied, doing her best to sound calm.

"The Ancients told me it was an image of a future they were trying to prevent. So one of you has to be lying. Unless..."

"Maybe they were lying. What if I killed you right now?" Sephiroth drew his sword slowly and lifted it to her throat, seeming to savor every movement -- and as soon as Aerith froze, a look of cold elation spread across his face. His grip on the sword remained steady, while she remained motionless, never tearing her eyes away from his and searching all the while, trying to convince herself that this was merely a sadistic ruse on his behalf even as his face said otherwise.

His Lifestream tinted eyes were different. The color seemed faded, the glow less intense -- and his expression flat and oddly lifeless, devoid of anything recognizable or redeeming. The careful veil of control that had slipped onto his face as soon as the killing had been done in the laboratory, five years before, wasn't anywhere. He looked like a different person. The only aspect of his visage that kept her from being truly afraid, though, was the odd lack of interest on his face.

"...You told me why I died, I think, but you didn't really tell me why you killed me." Aerith finally said. Sephiroth stared at her for a few more seconds, before the expression in his eyes changed -- transforming abruptly from cold disinterest to murderous rage and fury, misdirected yet potent, terrible to look at. For a split second, Aerith finally remembered to be terrified -- by all appearances, there was nothing rational enough in his mind to stop him from killing her.

Some outside force seemed to want her alive, though. Maybe it was the Planet and maybe it was the Cetra, because the moment after the sword flicked and reflected the sunlight and blood flew, he stumbled backwards and went to his knees, clutching his sword arm as the weapon clattered to the ground. Aerith put her hand to her cheek in shock, feeling a thin bleeding cut where the sword had just barely grazed her skin.

Sephiroth remained on his knees, clutching his arm and gritting his teeth in silence, struck by some unseen force -- and looking down at him now she noticed, for the first time, a series of bruises so dark they were almost black stretching up the side of his neck from under his cloak. He clamped his hand to the bruise after a moment, but as soon as Aerith took a step closer to him he was on his feet again, leaning on his sword heavily and giving her a cold, hateful look. Aerith sat in frozen silence and wondered how someone she had only met once could possibly have so much hatred for her.

_We will always protect you, Aerith._

Their voice thrummed and echoed inside of her head, smooth, mellow, and powerful. As soon as they spoke Sephiroth half-keeled over, clutching his head and cringing heavily, the timing too eerily perfect for it to be a coincidence. She heard it, now. The voice that only sought to comfort her punished him in the same breath, present in both their minds and yet so much _crueler_ in his. For the first time, Aerith understood.

"You're completely aware of what they're doing," Sephiroth managed to choke out, his voice now raw and strained with anger. "Don't let them lull you into false complacency. If it means they can fulfill their plans, they'll gladly kill you."

_His words are nothing but lies. Ignore them._

As warm and calm as the Cetra's voice sounded, Aerith could hear the undertones, now – and just a glimpse of the irrational tempest of fear and hatred underneath the serene surface made Aerith tremble, suddenly feeling the worry and stress and solitude of the situation all the more sharply, enough now to realize she had been misjudging the situation for a long, long time.

"They might be my ancestors, but… I have no clue what they're planning," Aerith forced the words out and knew as soon as she spoke that it wasn't enough. Pleading ignorance was as bad as admitting she was complicit in this mess, and maybe worse – because it was as good as confessing she had been complacent and naïve, too trusting and too frightened to act even when the signs that something wasn't _right_ were all plain before her. Sephiroth's expression changed from raw, misguided anger to the purest kind of loathing imaginable in the blink of an eye.

"As soon as they no longer need you, I'll kill you again." The words came out flatly, but this time there were no immediate repercussions – he returned to his feet and stared down at her with hate apparent on his face, and Aerith sat looking up at him, feeling a mix of helplessness and complete bewilderment. The Cetra said nothing this time, and their silence was as good as a confirmation. Before Aerith could say anything, though, another voice wafted in from across the yard.

"You show up in the strangest places."

It was Rufus. Two Turks now stood uneasily at the entrance to the small yard, while Rufus walked towards them, moving at a much more purposeful pace than usual. He no longer wore that same unchanging mix of carelessness and boredom she remembered seeing almost every day in Costa del Sol, though the look on his face now wasn't much of an improvement. He paused, glanced between Sephiroth and Aerith – noticing right away the bleeding cut on her face – and actually seemed amused. Maybe she had misjudged him, too – or maybe the problem was that the people around Aerith kept on changing while she remained the same, hopelessly naïve to the reality of the situation, to the point of complete helplessness.

"I was looking for you, Sephiroth." Rufus didn't even bother commenting on the odd situation he'd found them in – Aerith sitting and bleeding from a cut on the cheek, and Sephiroth standing with blood on his sword. "There's some kind of disturbance in the Sector 7 Reactor. I'd like you to go and take a look."

Aerith managed to look from the unflappable Rufus to Sephiroth again. His glowing Lifestream eyes no longer held anything – they were lifeless again, and his expression both disdainful and plainly disinterested as he looked back at Rufus.

"That doesn't sound like something I should be wasting my time on."

"…We noticed some fluctuations at the Nibel Reactor, too, and next thing we knew, something ripped it out of the ground. I'm trying to be a little more pro-active than my father was. Unless you don't think you can handle whatever it is that attacked Nibelheim?" Rufus's words came out blithely, but for a few seconds Aerith saw a shadow of doubt pass over his face while he looked at Sephiroth – before the SOLDIER was the one to break the silence.

"If you're that scared, I'll go take a look." Sephiroth said, irritably, before sweeping past Rufus and leaving the two of them without as much as a glance at Aerith. She continued to sit, hand still raised to her cheek and feeling a small trickle of blood continue to ooze against her fingers. The Cetra never said a word, but their silence was more distracted than it was uncaring. Even so, she could no longer make the mistake of thinking that they were being forthright with her, not anymore. But that had been true for a long time – since having met Sephiroth in the lab at Nibelheim, she knew they hadn't been the same.

"You once warned me that something would stop my father and me before we ever found the Promised Land." Rufus managed to startle Aerith – she'd forgotten about his presence, for just a moment. He wasn't looking at her, though – instead, Rufus glared irritably at the corner Sephiroth had just disappeared around. "It's probably him, isn't it?"

Aerith didn't respond – it didn't really need a response. Instead, she lifted her trowel again and forced herself to resume tending to the flowers, ignoring the now dried blood on her face only because she didn't yet have the presence of mind required to get up and walk steadily over to a sink and wash it away. Whatever thin veil of control the Cetra had over Sephiroth had saved her life, but in the face of such oddly focused hateful intensity, she doubted even they could control him perfectly all the time. But the Cetra's silence unnerved her more than Sephiroth. Her mother, her ancestors, all the rest… they were nearly unrecognizable to her.

"Whenever he's done using Shinra, he'll probably kill us all, anyway," Rufus shrugged, a rather exaggerated gesture – then flipped his hand through his hair and turned away. "Don't bother looking satisfied about it. He'll lump you in with the rest of us and kill you, too. We're just part of his game."

For a brief moment Aerith looked up at Rufus, sharply, wondering if there was any merit to Rufus's judgment of the situation. Maybe Sephiroth was somehow capable of playing a trick on all of them – maybe he was the one controlling her ancestors while they fought helplessly back, trying to usurp some of his control while he led them on a path towards carnage. She knew about the Crisis from the Skies, and had been around Shinra and Hojo long enough to know that their scientists had already tread the irrevocable path and awakened something terrible in the Northern Crater. She had gleaned enough knowledge from her ancestors to be fully aware that manipulation was just one of the powers held by the false ancient.

But the fleeting idea crumbled as devastatingly as any other false hope. Aerith wanted to think perhaps it was that simple, that Sephiroth was the sole reason for the Planet's trembling and the Cetra's madness, that he was the architect of whatever dangers were in store – but that was only the easiest, most understandable explanation. It didn't mesh with what she'd seen. The fleeting expression on his face in the seconds right after Sephiroth's sudden, unexpected appearance had been helplessness.

_I have to do something._

Aerith placed her trowel down and wiped off her face with a sigh, before looking back up at Rufus, thinking wryly that if the Planet was too terrified to speak and the Cetra refused to include her in their plans, the only real trump card she had in all of this was the dim hope that _maybe_, just _maybe_, the President of Shinra Inc. wasn't quite so arrogantly foolish as his father.

"It's not Sephiroth. It's the other Ancients… the Cetra." She managed to catch Rufus' attention – maybe because of the words themselves, and maybe because he never expected her to act anything but clueless while he was around – but the reasons didn't really matter. For the first time, Rufus looked at her with genuine interest instead of half-hearted curiosity.

**

* * *

**

"So, are we ready? Do we have a look out in every sector?"

"Yeah. And everyone who doesn't need to be here is gone. We've got guards posted at every entrance and exit."

"What about the plate release mechanism? You got someone posted up there?"

"Of course. Just like you said."

"Good. Gotta look out for these things, ya know. I wouldn't ever put anything past Shinra." Zack smiled darkly and watched Biggs and Wedge run off to make sure everything was going smoothly, thinking all the while that there was some kind of sick irony to his words but not really wanting to look too deeply into it, particularly now, with everyone's nerves on edge.

Across the plate, Shinra HQ loomed against the smoggy night sky, its lights barely visible through the obscuring mako haze. The heavy, metallic scent of mako hung in the air around them, so cloying he could tell some of the newbies – the kids from places outside Midgar, who had never been to the city itself – were choking on it. Even Tifa looked a little green around the gills, but then again, he figured her case was more nerves than mako side-effect. Barrett was nervous, too, something the man would have never dared admit but was definitely apparent by the way he kept on pacing around in the small alleyway, occasionally pausing to readjust his new gun arm in irritation and curse softly into the night.

Zack didn't feel nervous. He was relaxed, actually. Thoughts of Aerith and Cloud kept on wafting through his thoughts unbidden, but it was the thankful distraction from the night around him he needed, just enough to keep his nerves from going into overdrive and starting to fray him around the edges. The others crouched in the alleyway with him were nervous for good reason. It wasn't a normal night. Around them Midgar sat in a stilted eerie silence, broken only by distant siren wails and the occasion engine backfiring nearby. Even Wall Market, which typically buzzed even at late hours, had been silent tonight, though maybe that was only because their first act upon arriving in Midgar had been to clear out all the mobsters and pimps and make sure the sewer rats over in that dump were flushed out and driven away, an extra form of insurance against all possible betrayals. The possibility of traitors in their midst was a touchy subject for Zack. This time, they were taking the war right to Shinra's footsteps, and he didn't want any weaknesses. Fort Condor was past. They had regrouped right in the President's backyard.

He checked his watch – an hour after midnight, right on the dot, and a few feet away one of the AVALANCHE girls – Jess or Jessie was her name, he recalled – looked up sharply and gave him a thumbs up.

"Code's cracked. The gate's open. You ready, boss?"

"I'm ready. What about you guys?" Zack asked. Next to him Tifa readjusted her gloves on her hands and suppressed a cringe, likely from the pain shooting through her still healing arm. Barrett straightened up and irritably fidgeted with his newer and far less accommodating gun arm, though Zack felt his resolve only solidify at his comrade's apparent hardships. Hell, it wasn't just resolve. Zack was in the kind of mood best reserved for kicking the crap out of people.

"We're ready. We shouldn't stick around for too long, anyway. Shinra fuckheads are bound to patrol this area, sooner or later." Barrett grunted, and Zack smirked.

"Not a big deal. Just remember -- if anything moves suddenly, shoot the shit out of it. Don't pause to ask questions."

Zack realized a moment later the words came out a little too breezily, but neither Tifa nor Barrett looked even remotely shocked. Zack took note of the grim looks on their faces and concluded there was no real reason to moderate his words.

"I'd like to see that silver-haired bastard come through here right now," Barrett replied, now loading his gun arm with jerky, pointed movements. Zack said nothing, but several thoughts swirled through his head -- no coherent response for that except little flares of incensed anger that worsened with every passing second. He didn't want to be seeing any silver-haired bastards at all.

Tifa, though, remained calm, even as they prepared to leap headfirst into what had the potential to be another immense shitstorm. She had more poise than any of the rest, actually, probably the same cool patience that kept her so attached to the world's second most reticent person. Said reticent spiky-headed weirdo was probably somewhere an entire continent away, and Zack wondered if perhaps Cloud was planning the same thing they were. It seemed likely – he had the advantage of having way more fire power than Zack did.

"I hope we don't see any SOLDIERS. Not now." Tifa's words were sensible enough, though Barrett still scowled even if the other AVALANCHE members with them were nodding in agreement. Zack grinned and began walking coolly towards the gate Jessie had just unlocked, keenly admiring her hacking skills and realizing that if Shinra had someone like her working for them, they wouldn't have had to worry about unwanted civilians sneaking into their reactors.

"If SOLDIERS do come, keep in mind most of them can be stopped by bullets, too. You've just gotta see 'em coming before hand." Zack figured the others liked his ridiculous bravado, because even Barrett smirked a little. "Let's move out."

They left the alleyway in a line, just three of them. The others hung back and dispersed as soon as Zack, Tifa and Barrett passed through the gate, through an intense mako haze and into the inner workings of Shinra Reactor number 5. Zack vaulted down a maintenance ladder and landed on a narrow catwalk, pausing and turning towards his two companions.

"You two hang back a moment, watch this area. If anyone's heading towards the core, they'll have to come this way. I'll go plant the bomb and be out in a few minutes."

Barrett and Tifa both nodded, trusting him quickly enough for it to be a surprise, and Zack grinned shortly before sprinting along the catwalk, feeling somewhere between stupid and manipulative and wondering if either of the two of them had an inkling of the little white lie he'd just told. But he had to give them credit where credit was due – they were smart enough to have realized it, and trusting enough not to call Zack out on his obvious foible.

What they were doing was very obvious. Carving a swath through the guards outside the reactor and creating a miniature bloodbath in the theme of Shinra Trooper had been a very stupidly obvious provocation. Zack wasn't trying to sneak into a reactor and plant a bomb and sneak out and then make an announcement the next day, when the ash cleared, accepting responsibility on AVALANCHE's behalf. He was bringing the war to Midgar.

At some point, he knew he was going to have to get up and wash some of the ash and blood off his clothes, but for now it felt oddly fitting. Here he was, running over a thin catwalk with the stench of mako all around, hating Shinra while considering whether or not he'd actually flipped this time. Back in Wutai, killing wasn't something he'd enjoyed doing -- just something he'd done. After every skirmish, he'd gone to bed every night feeling like hell, knowing at least in the morning he'd wake up and people would be hailing him as some kind of hero.

Right now, he wasn't so sure. Maybe Shinra deserved it, but blowing up a reactor and letting all of the otherwise innocent technicians hanging out in the area seemed like so much senseless carnage, and killing all the pathetic soldier failures that made up Shinra's military police to get to the reactor felt just as bad. Dreaming about being a hero five years ago felt a little stupid in hindsight, now that Zack was certain Shinra had gradually eroded away his ability to believe in heroes. None of that really mattered, though -- Zack didn't like looking into things too deeply, especially when getting lost in his own head distracted him from what was really important.

He skidded to a halt in front of the reactor's core control and placed a tiny explosive charge in a low corner, feigning nonchalance and easy confidence even as the play of shadows in the dim reactor core and light dancing through the haze alerted him to another person's presence.

"You know, you're like a bad penny. You just don't go away, do you?" No response, and Zack smirked. "C'mon. I know I'm not talking to myself, though I'm probably crazy enough for it. Say something."

Nothing. A little fuse popped in Zack's head. Before he knew it he whirled around and charged, unsurprised to find his blade blocked by a much narrower one. His attempt at disarming his opponent failed and they ended up facing one another through their swords, Zack bracing all of his strength not to get thrown backwards and the other man looking eerily relaxed and unmoved. Something about the serene confidence in the other man's Lifestream-tinted eyes threw Zack a little, broke his own confidence enough to get him to reveal his trump card prematurely.

"You look like you own the world, like usual. But you know what, you fucking asshole? Try something funny, and all I've got to do is push a button and this reactor will blow sky-high. Understand? It's totally rigged. I don't know if you can regenerate your limbs or do something crazy like that, but I don't think even the strongest SOLDIER can survive getting blown to pieces."

"You'd do that and leave it all to Cloud, then?" The bastard dared to sound just a little amused, and Zack felt more fuses take light and blow up messily inside his head. He was wired a little too tightly this evening, even more so now that the Buster Sword was all that remained between him and the certainty of a five-foot long katana getting shoved down his throat. Even knowing and understanding the threat didn't do much to keep his mouth shut, though.

"Sure. Once you're gone, Shinra's nothing. Cloud might miss me, but he's tough. He'd get over it."

"Hn. Are you sure about that? He can be a little fragile. If you died, who knows to what lengths he'd go to replace you?"

Zack froze, staring up at Sephiroth while the other glared right back at him with an oddly self-satisfied smirk – and Zack's hands moved before his mind could, drawing back the buster sword and aiming for Sephiroth's head in a sweeping arc, fast and powerful enough to kill. Unsurprisingly, the other man blocked his blade like it was nothing and sent Zack skidding back along the now swaying catwalk. Sephiroth didn't bother taking a fighting stance.

Zack stared at him, choking back enough rage for words to come out of his mouth again only after a few quiet, tense seconds. He wondered if he really was going to die in this place.

"Don't act like you know anything about Cloud, you fucking traitor."

"Traitor? Who said I was on your side in the first place?" Sephiroth's response was almost criminally lacking in expression, just a bland statement of fact. Somehow, the lack of reaction almost made the final fuse blow in Zack's head. He reigned in what would have been an explosion of rage by lowering his sword, staring at Sephiroth in the darkness and wondering if it hadn't been obvious all along – the other man had an agenda. It had nothing to do with Zack, Cloud, or Aerith.

"You know what? You don't make any sense. At all. Just what are you trying to do? What the hell are you using us for? Why'd you save Aerith? Why'd you save Cloud and me? Are you really insane? Is that your problem?"

"If you believe that I'm insane, you're asking a pointless question. I wouldn't need a reason." Sephiroth actually shrugged, just a little – and unlike Rufus Shinra, who always drew out the gesture as long as humanly possible, the movement was so understated Zack barely noticed it. The dead expression in Sephiroth's eyes didn't change. "…But I'm not the one who's insane."

"Right, right." Zack almost casually blasted a Materia spell in Sephiroth's direction and managed to be completely unsurprised when the other flicked his sword and the flames dissipated. Sephiroth was a waste of a flare spell. He was a waste of time to consider, actually, but for one discrepancy that had been bugging Zack since the very beginning. The time for giving the other man the benefit of the doubt was past. "Where the hell do you know Cloud from?"

"Why don't you ask him?"

"…I may as well, but I sure as hell won't get any kind of answer, would I? It's just the same with you. Why the hell are you even here? What do you want? If you're going to kill me, just get it over with!"

"I know where Aerith is."

Zack stopped cold before it registered, but he gave Sephiroth's words just enough consideration to realize he was completely unsurprised. Of course Sephiroth knew something, because the otherwise smug look of self-satisfaction slowly creeping across his face wouldn't have been there if he didn't have an ace in the hole. Zack's threats seemed meaningless, now. An explosion at point blank range probably wasn't enough to kill him, but Sephiroth also wasn't the sort to avoid taking precautions. Zack knew that already, like he'd know it about the other man all along.

Surprisingly, though, Zack figured this was working out to be a big disappointment for the other, who seemed to expect Zack to fly into another rage. He kept his cool, trying to borrow some of Sephiroth's preternaturally collected demeanor for just a few seconds. "I figured. Are you going to tell me where she is?"

"No. But she is alive, for now. I won't kill her."

"That's very nice of you. It's funny, there was once a time when I wouldn't even have thought you'd do something like that. So you'll understand if I don't exactly seem reassured right now."

Sephiroth tilted his head a little, and casually added, "I'll keep her alive as long as it takes. This time, I want to kill her while both you and Cloud are watching."

_This time?_

Zack managed to surprise Sephiroth, amazingly. Their swords clashed with enough force to send the other man skidding backwards, and he actually bothered grasping his sword with both hands, defensively. In a blur of motion, Zack brought the full weight of the Buster Sword down towards Sephiroth's head and felt reverberation at the last minute, then a quick retaliation. Cold shards of ice bit into his face and Zack just barely managed to deflect taking some kind of ice spell head-on, thinking all the while that taking the other man's katana and cramming it right back in Sephiroth's face might have been preferable to trying to exchange words tonight.

Sephiroth disagreed, clearly. Rage blinded Zack to reality long enough for Sephiroth to forcibly disarm him, sending him crashing into the catwalk railing and nearly breaking it. The Buster Sword hit the ground about five feet away. Clearly not looking for further irritation, Sephiroth slammed his booted foot down on Zack's wrist the moment before he lunged for his sword again, though Zack rolled backwards, spitting the worst curses he could think of and jerking his arm away – before surprising Sephiroth a _second_ time in one night.

Zack's booted foot connected with Sephiroth's chin at full force, shocking him enough to send him stumbling backwards and yet sadly not with enough strength to knock his head off, but Zack took what he could get. The feeling of savage satisfaction was enough. If Sephiroth killed him now, at least he'd die knowing that he'd taken his boot to the other man's face. Zack dove for his sword and managed to lift it defensively, coming to a grim realization as soon as he parried a blow that was almost strong enough to break his arm.

_He's serious. This asshole is serious._

Zack swung his sword in an arc and Sephiroth parried it aside, leaving Zack completely open for one horrible split second. He saw it, almost in slow motion – his eyes were fast enough to recognize that Sephiroth's sword was headed straight for his neck, and in the space between life and his impending death, Zack started thinking about Cloud.

"Fuck you. I'm not leaving it up to Spike this time!" Zack didn't have the speed to dodge completely, but he had the mako-drenched cells needed to take a blade through the shoulder and still come charging right back. Sephiroth withdrew his sword fast as lightning and actually had to leap away, as the Buster Sword crashed to the catwalk with enough force to split the thin sheet metal. Zack saw a thin streak of blood strike the catwalk a millisecond later, but he didn't feel an ounce of satisfaction. Just a narrow cut on Sephiroth's sword arm – bound to heal in a matter of seconds, while Zack felt his wound slowly knitting together and gushing blood down his back and shoulder, causing his breaths to come raggedly and a little moistly.

Surprisingly, Zack's rage started dissipating, something very much like defeat sliding into the place in his mind previously occupied by anger, though it didn't stop Zack from flinging another materia spell in Sephiroth's direction and attempting another all-out attack, this one about four times slower and a hundred times as hopeless as the last. Nothing but a single, simple strike – aiming to hurt, but Zack smiled wryly as soon as Sephiroth deflected the blow, realizing that without rage flooding his senses, it was a little hard to summon the urge to kill. He didn't really know why. He wanted anyone who so openly and flatly threatened his friends long dead and gone.

"This time?" Sephiroth questioned. "That's right. I guess you really do have a habit of leaving things up to Cloud, don't you?"

"I don't know what the hell you're talking about," Zack responded, curtly, now cringing against the pain in his shoulder. Even mako-infused cells couldn't swiftly heal a wound that went all the way through so many layers of bone and muscle that it came out the other side, though they were enough to compensate for the blood loss – and keep him from passing out, so long as he was able to endure the pain. "But then, half the time, I don't even know what I'm talking about, either."

Zack prepared another attack, this one slow and pained enough to be _foolish_ – but a moment later he stumbled in almost shock. Sephiroth stood for a moment, as unflappable as ever, looking almost sardonic – before suddenly dropping to one knee, his sword clattering out of his hand and his arm falling limply at his side.

The other man reached down and drew back his sleeve for just a moment, then cringed mightily – and now Zack saw it, too. Ugly black and purpling bruises so intense they were causing Sephiroth's skin to crack and break apart stretched across his wrist and up his arm completely, and when Sephiroth rose his head to glare at Zack, the same purple and black bruises now spread up the side of his neck and partway across his exposed collarbone and chest, oozing blood uncontrollably. Zack had never seen anything quite like it.

"What the hell…?"

"…Just the effort from healing that pathetic cut was too much," Sephiroth sounded tired and amused, now, not at all concerned – and when he looked up, Zack saw his mako eyes were now so dull they were almost gray. "…I guess you won't have to leave it up to Cloud after all."

_Now's my chance, huh?_ Zack swallowed and lifted the Buster Sword, truly realizing what had happened only after a moment of staring. Something was horribly wrong with the mako in Sephiroth's body, of course, that was apparent for anyone to see now – and now that he was down, he wasn't going to be getting up so soon. It was the perfect timing.

"Well?" Sephiroth sounded irritated, even impatient.

"You're seriously going to kill Aerith? While Cloud and I are watching?"

"... Unless you kill me first."

"…You know, I'm really sick of you leading me around. It's like you've just got greens on a string, and I'm a damn chocobo. It's not really funny. Just give me a yes or no answer. Make it easier for me."

"I will certainly kill her."

That did it. The words were enough even with the knowledge that the threat was delivered too disinterestedly and resignedly to be anything but half-hearted. Zack summoned up the rage and charged, dropping his sword low and remembering all of his training, preparing for one swift thrust that would end the other SOLDIER's life and probably end the war – he could only hope – but the second before his blade fell a wave of iridescent green flooded his vision. His sword struck against some substance as solid as metal – but mostly transparent, _Lifestream_. The Buster Sword ricocheted and flew from Zack's hands, and something struck _him_, blasting him backwards and sending him skidding along the catwalk with such force that only his head hitting the wall halted the slide. Stunned, Zack forced his head up, spitting out blood and glaring over at Sephiroth.

The other man was still down on one knee, his head down. He hadn't even lifted his sword.

"What the hell was that?"

It didn't seem like he was going to get a response – but then, Sephiroth shook his head slightly.

"I guess not. Their plans really aren't so easy to overturn."

Struggling to get back to his feet, Zack lurched upright – but before he could stumble clumsily towards the Buster Sword a rain of bullets struck the catwalk. Sephiroth might have been down for the count, but his reflexes returned in a flash and he leapt back, avoiding the bullets completely. A fire spell struck the catwalk next, and Zack smiled wanly – Tifa and Barrett were following his orders even if he'd ignored his own advice, shooting first and asking questions later – and best of all, keeping their distance. Sephiroth managed to block the fire spell, but his movements were sluggish. Zack took advantage of the distraction, hoping this time he could get a fair strike in and knowing all the while it was probably pointless. Somehow, Sephiroth just barely managed to get his own katana between the Buster Sword and his face – and for a split second, Zack glared and he glared right back.

"Cloud's on another continent, ripping Shinra a new one. If you're going to kill Aerith while both he and I are around, you're going to have to wait a little. Of course, I really don't think you can handle both of us at once, asshole. Just wait until we take you down."

"Don't get careless, Zack, or you won't even get that chance," Sephiroth replied, then thrust his sword through Zack's uninjured shoulder and almost casually flicked him away. As soon as Zack hit the ground Sephiroth put one hand to the catwalk and vaulted right over the edge – falling towards the reactor core below and disappearing into the glowing Lifestream, just as Tifa and Barrett came running, her calling Zack's name and Barrett wasting bullets, shooting down into the Lifestream after Sephiroth and cursing him long after the other had vanished.

"Zack! Are you all right? ZACK!"

"Relax, Tifa. Just get me a cure materia, okay?" Zack gritted out, unable to force the usual cocky grin on his face before rolling back to his feet, feeling his insides twisting into knots even while he pretended to be confident. "Let's finish the job and blow this damn reactor up, okay?"

"But what about--" Tifa and Barrett had probably heard close to the whole thing, actually, and Zack realized in a dim blur that maybe five minutes had passed since he had entered the reactor. Before she could finish, he cut her off.

"—He doesn't care whether or not we blow this place sky high. He hates Shinra just as much I do. Whatever the hell he's trying to do isn't really about them." Zack muttered, earning an odd stare from both Tifa and Barrett – and realizing all the while what should have been obvious, that no matter how confident the other bastard of a SOLDIER seemed, he was still on the losing side of whatever game he was playing.

**

* * *

**

The ground rushed up to meet Sephiroth and he coughed, feeling congealing mako in his lungs and unsurprised to find that the Cetra had simply taken him and thrown him somewhere else – forward, backwards, or maybe sideways through time and space, to a place where the air felt dry and hot even at night and the soil was dusty. Though still capable of tossing him to wherever he was needed, manipulating his actions when he was about to derail their plans, and defending him from obvious threats, he could no longer hear their voices – just distant murmurs, barely more than a whisper in his mind.

Sephiroth smiled slightly, but he knew right away it wasn't worth it. The take-over of the Jenova cells was nearing its completion – once it reached his nervous system, heart, and lungs, that was it. He felt oddly listless about the whole situation, possibly because a thick fog now lingered between him and the rest of the world, the culmination of Jenova's influence slowly overwhelming each of his senses. They were still fighting a war in his head, of course. Among the whispers from the Cetra he heard Jenova's sibilant hiss, now confident as the Cetra's influence over him had begun to wane. His memories, now, were crystal clear. The takeover staged by the Jenova cells had given him that much.

Zack had been trying a lot harder during their first fight in the reactor. It was strange. Neither of them had really tried this time, possibly because Zack had gained some perspective during his time with Hojo, and possibly because _this_ Zack had some inkling of how likely Cloud was to break without him. But if Cloud Strife _remembered_, he already knew what losing Zack meant, and had already weathered that particular storm. Sephiroth recalled the mingling of hatred and despair in Strife's eyes in the final moment, right before taking Sephiroth's life with omnislash – and smirked a little, a wan expression.

Slowly, he rose to his feet, recalling Hojo's words in a fog and trying to focus his mind on taking small steps even as the pain in his insides, of cells rupturing and bursting and skin cracking to pieces and organs slowly succumbing to Jenova worsened. Sephiroth swayed slightly, moving along the cracked soil and towards a structure in the distance. He recognized Corel, only dimly. The grim spire of the Mako Reactor loomed in the distance, but a Shinra science outpost sat closer, a small compound near where the old coal mines had once been. Sephiroth made his way towards the main building, each one of his steps becoming more of an effort.

"_**You are almost complete, my son. Very soon… we can…" **_Jenova's voice grew louder, though still fragmented by the increasingly desperate cacophony emanating from the Cetra – and Sephiroth smirked, murmuring aloud in the silent night. There didn't seem to be enough room in his head for his own thoughts.

"Complete? You're on the verge of fading away into the Lifestream…"

"_**That isn't true. Together, we can…"**_

"Together, we utterly failed last time... The Cetra still won."

"_**Because of the last ancient... Because of Cloud Strife… not through any intrinsic power of their own…"**_

"It was all probably just a game to them… they manipulated Cloud and Aerith the whole time…"

"_**But this time, they will not follow the same course. Because the last ancient became part of the Lifestream, she was able to take control over it and use it to combat Meteor. That destroyed the last vestiges of the Cetra's power, and doomed the planet to a slow yet eventual demise."**_

"…What are you saying…? Should I summon Meteor again, just to watch the Cetra scramble? So long as Aerith lives… she won't be able to do a thing, is that it…?"

"_**Precisely, my son."**_

The Cetra, who hated him most for choosing to believe in a delusion while they, too, believed in their own pathetic delusions – raged up inside of his head, but with the mako in his body rotting and their power over him fading, there wasn't much they could do. But the mako was still intrinsically part of him, just like the Jenova cells, and pathetically weak human DNA. He wasn't an ancient. He wasn't a human. He wasn't whatever Jenova was. He certainly wasn't anyone's son, now that the pathetic wreck of a woman lingering behind the waterfall was dead, the human part of her wasted away in the Lifestream.

Sephiroth's mind was in fragments, his sense of self held in pieces somewhere between three lurking presences in his head, and he realized what had always been true – he still had control over his own delusions. He could choose to pose as an Ancient, choose to believe Jenova was his mother, or choose to embrace whatever other existence lurked in his head, the fledgling and newly-discovered and truthfully very unsettling possibility that he might have been human like Cloud and Zack and all of those others. He paused outside of the Shinra outpost's main building, squinting through the fog enveloping him and realizing he could barely move his rotting left arm, and smirked a little at Jenova's self-assured satisfaction. It was odd, feeling _her_ obvious glee and at the same time knowing full well that his world had more or less broken apart all around him. He might have been breaking into pieces, too.

"I was never your pawn, Jenova. Why would I ever want to be? You seem to think you used me last time and almost achieved what you desired, but you were wrong. _You_ were my pawn, but you were also worthless. I don't need you anymore."

Sephiroth felt Jenova's confidence shatter, and suddenly the lingering presence began screaming in his mind, desperately, cursing him in all the ways imaginable while the Cetra awaited with bated breath.

"_You've made the right decision…"_

"Don't get ahead of yourselves. Now that I know I have a choice and there's nothing _you_ can do about it, I want an acknowledgement from you, too." Sephiroth muttered, and the Cetra seemed to tense in anger and surge up inside of his mind – before abruptly reining their reactions back under control. Taking and coercing where two things they did best, now. They didn't like bargaining at all.

"Because I can simply let Jenova take over and rob you of your best weapon, you should be willing to make a deal. I will continue to go along with your plans, but I'll do things how _I_ wish. There'll be no more throwing me back and forth through time, trying to fix whatever it is that you've broken. If it's necessary to alter something, I'll choose when and how to do it. I've always been better at it than you, anyway."

"_What else is it that you want, then? You can't possibly be content with just that."_

"Don't get me wrong. I'm fully aware that I'm still just one of your pawns, as disgusting as it is. But to do this effectively, I'll need a pawn of my own. Just like last time."

The Cetra's bewilderment slowly gave way to dawning awareness – and then, finally, to grim, ruthless amusement. It was ironic that they pretended to be on a higher ground than Jenova, because they didn't seem to be aware at all that they were _supposed_ to immediately oppose Sephiroth's suggestion. They didn't. They understood.

"_Is it still possible?"_

"Of course. In fact, I think it'll be even easier. Remember what Hojo said? It isn't just Jenova cells that we share, now."

The Cetra considered him for a long, silent moment, and Sephiroth remained still, even as he choked and drew his hand away from his mouth covered in blood and mako. Breathing, now, came with a considerable effort, and by his approximation, his own pulse seemed shaky and irregular. He was close, _very_ close, but this time, the Ancients didn't consider his offer for long. Slowly at first, a rumble began, growing louder and louder until the sound of their laughter echoed hollowly around his head. Somehow, though, among the laughter, he thought he sensed more discordance. It interested him, but he didn't spend much time thinking about it, merely filing it away for later consideration.

"Well…?"

"_We misunderstood you. Perhaps we overestimated whatever remnant of humanity lurks inside of you. Given the many failures in your life, we anticipated you would act as all humans would and use the opportunity as an attempt to redeem yourself for the sake of the frail bonds you developed during your life. But we see now that you truly do not care one way or the other what happens to those frail connections of yours. You are truly an effective Weapon."_

"I thought the same thing, once. But maybe _I_ was overestimating my own humanity." Sephiroth smiled into nothingness. With all the delusions of his previous life shattered from the outset, there had been a short while – maybe the time spent traveling with Zack an Cloud, perhaps meeting Aerith, and perhaps realizing that the name Sephiroth had been meaningless in this world – when he'd truly believed in something as foolish and irrational as a second chance. There was a certain endearment, after all, to living a life where Jenova, the Cetra and the Ancients didn't matter. But that was unattainable, just another delusion.

The time for such delusions was long past. Sephiroth was tired of deceiving himself. Believing he could derail the Cetra's plans by allowing himself to die, one way or the other, or believing he could coerce Zack and Cloud away from playing into the Cetra's hands was the final and most foolish deception. "Whether they hate me or not no longer matters." He had once lied to the Cetra, telling them it had never mattered in the first place. In their elation, though, they were careless enough not to notice the contradiction.

"_Very well. Do as you wish. We will eagerly await the results."_

Sephiroth smiled and stepped into the outpost monitoring station, surprising the hell out of the sole scientist who remained working, keeping an eye on the reactor's vitals and the Lifestream fluctuations even at this late hour of the night. When he saw Sephiroth, his face went completely pale.

"I need a few vials of undiluted mako."

The scientist stared at him. "Undiluted mako…?"

"Inject it directly into my bloodstream. I know you have medical supplies here."

"But… undiluted mako is… it's almost purely unfiltered Lifestream. If it's not diluted by something, it'll probably kill you the moment it enters your system. Your body will reject it."

"Just do it, now. Or I'll kill you and find someone else who will."

The scientist didn't argue, and within moments he injected three vials of undiluted mako directly into Sephiroth's blood stream, replenishing the cells that Jenova had destroyed. The immediate reaction nearly killed him, even despite it all. His vision went entirely green and his throat grew tight, while his blood vessels started to constrict and it seemed very likely he was on the verge of having a massive seizure – but then the immediate reaction subsided, leaving Sephiroth very much alive but on the ground choking, even as his senses sharpened, the fog cleared away, and the voice of the Cetra became so loud in his mind that just a whisper nearly flattened him.

"_You've made the right decision." _No more orders, though – no more ultimatums or threats, either. The Cetra finally respected him enough to let him pursue their goals without as much as a push. And Jenova, though raging mad, was now nothing more than a distant whisper in his mind. The horrific bruising on his neck and arm began to recede visibly, and soon his strength returned. The only remnant was a rather dull ache in his limbs that he barely noticed and blank white spaces in his mind, where more memories had vanished in the aftermath of his decision.

**A/N**

1. Reverse in a nutshell: 100,000+ words of angst and worsening intentions.

2. Next update: Cloud and Yuffie. And you know how this is filed under the Sephiroth/Cloud filter? And how in the summary I mention S/C is one of the pairings? Well, the two of them actually _interact_ next chapter.

**If you read this far, you know what to do next... please review!** **pretty please...?**


	16. Chapter 16

**Chapter Sixteen **

"You may as well sit the fuck down, Mr. Vice President, or whatever you are. It's gonna be a long goddamn ride."

Rufus turned around and gave the captain of the Highwind a cool glare, though the man only shrugged and took another drag on his cigarette, his complete lack of concern apparent. Only an hour into their trip and they had already managed to form a mutual dislike for one another. "Ain't much to see out in the dark like it is now, anyway."

"I guess not." Rufus returned the apathetic shrug and left the front window, making his way to the in-flight board room. He was surprised to find Aerith there, sitting pensively at the table with her hands folded. The wonderment from earlier was gone - she'd been the first to rush onboard the Highwind when it'd docked, clearly thrilled at the opportunity to fly on Shinra's state of the art propeller driven aircraft. Now troubles had caught up, leaving Aerith pensive, almost sullen. It didn't seem like her at all.

"I still don't see why you're so troubled over all of this. Shouldn't you be happy? If Sephiroth and the Cetra are in cohorts, doesn't it mean the planet itself is on our side?" A slight smirk tugged at the corner of his lips. She raised her head and gave him a remarkably unimpressed look, though she matched his insouciant tone effortlessly.

"Our side? I'm not too sure what you mean by that, Mr. Vice President."

"I think I mentioned at some point that I'm the President."

"Oh, that's right. I keep on forgetting." Aerith gave a big, exaggerated shrug, and it was just slow enough for him to know she was mocking him. Though he wasn't sure what else to say about her, he definitely respected her spirit. Things didn't seem to be going her way; he could tell it by the troubled look she couldn't quite manage to hide and the worry furrowing her brow. Despite that, the girl still had an edge, at least enough to take whatever Rufus said in stride. A hard nut to crack, though he liked to think that maybe he did have some leverage over her now that she had confessed to her own confusion. Ancient or not, she barely knew more than he did.

"It's strange. All these years we've been hearing about how Shinra's reactors are destroying the Planet. But seems like the Cetra have found a use for them now, huh? Anyone with principles wouldn't side with an ally whose methods are completely against their own values, right? But doesn't seem like your ancestors feel that way. They might be as selfish and opportunistic as us humans. So much for being guardians of the planet." Rufus didn't need to say any of this, of course. Aerith was already aware of the contradictions, clearly, and bringing it up again only counted as so much needless cruelty. But Rufus couldn't help but be satisfied. The years his father had spent chasing this girl had yielded not a single tidbit of useful information or data, but here she was, willing to lead him right to the threshold of something literally beyond the imagination of any of Shinra's other hopelessly short-sighted and stupid executives.

Aerith didn't acknowledge his taunts. She never did - and yet today she was still uncharacteristically serious, only sitting and looking at her own hands in silence. He wondered if she was pondering her own helplessness, and a moment later her dour mood made his thoughts turn inwards, too, towards the lingering suspicions in his own mind.

Taken alone, her confession didn't mean much, nor did it reveal anything Rufus hadn't guessed. It was obvious Sephiroth had something on his side that went beyond even the supernatural power granted to all SOLDIER first class specimens. The fact that all those charming old legends and empty mysticism about the Cetra somehow being innocent protectors of the Planet weren't at all close to reality didn't surprise Rufus either, especially after being raised among the large-scale gathering of cutthroats and vermin that made up the upper echelons of Shinra Electric Power Company. He'd long since learned that no one with power was innocent. But the implications hidden just beneath the surface of Aerith's tale were disturbing.

"How do we know that it isn't just Sephiroth who's manipulating the Cetra, and not the other way around?"

"We don't. We don't really know anything."

"But you know a lot more than what you told me earlier." Rufus pointed out. Aerith lowered her eyes for a moment, before looking at him with a surprisingly direct expression on her face.

"It's a feeling I have. Something I can sense from the Planet… something I can sense from listening to their voices. They've changed. They're not like they should be. I can hardly ever hear my mother's voice anymore... I'm worried." Aerith didn't come out and say it, but Rufus almost pitied her for being so certain in her parent's infallibility that the mere thought of them being manipulative, lacking any kind of principle and possibly spineless was disturbing to her. She didn't look willing to say anything more, though Rufus didn't mind. He rose to his feet, thinking it was probably best to leave her to her thoughts and retire for the night. They wouldn't be landing on the Northern Continent until morning, and if she didn't say another word it didn't matter. He had what he needed, anyway.

"I'm glad you're agreeing to do this," Aerith said, just before he left the room. Rufus paused.

"You have to know this trip isn't just for you."

"...It's pretty obvious, yeah." She returned to her usual self in a flash, her tone light but her words cutting. "You were saying something earlier about how anyone who works with someone whose values are completely at odds with their own doesn't have any principles? Well, sometimes we really don't get to choose these things."

Rufus just looked at her for a moment, though by now he had learned to take her insults in stride. She wasn't trying to make fun so much as stating the very obvious: here they were, traveling to this supposed City of Ancients, her with thoughts of probing into the true nature of whatever it was that ailed the planet, and Rufus with thoughts of conquest and a lifelong desire to find for himself the one thing his father had dreamed of and yet never grasped. Their goals really were completely at odds.

"You said something earlier about how neither my father nor I would ever find the Promised Land, but you're leading me right to it, aren't you?" Rufus remarked, after a moment. It was almost pathological, how neither he nor Aerith ever wanted to give the other the last word.

"...It may not be what you want. Not anymore. It might not be what anyone wants." Aerith was never smug, never satisfied over the fact that she knew what he didn't, and the look on her face gave Rufus second thoughts again before he had to push them aside. But even as he went to his own quarters and irritably sat at a private desk, too wired to sleep and staring blankly at the wall across from him, he kept on thinking back to the disquieting feeling he'd encountered in Junon, just before meeting Sephiroth for the first time - that all the Mako Reactors, SOLDIERS, and money in the world couldn't hold back whatever was lurking just beyond the edges of darkness.

**

* * *

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"So Chocobo-head. What's our next move?"

"Just wait for my signal."

Cloud didn't exactly plan. The elders at Cosmo Canyon were going to give her the lecture to end all lectures for falling in with him, but if they really were going to pull this one off without a hitch, Yuffie had the feeling they wouldn't really care. At the end of the day, a downed reactor was a downed reactor, and judging by the half-hungry half-crazy look in Strife's eyes, Yuffie was certain Shinra's empire was going to have one less leg to stand over when the sun fell.

The rest of her ninja waited, sprawled out over several hundred yards, hiding in the bushes and virtually invisible. They were just south of the reactor, amidst the wilderness near the train tracks. A lot of craziness surrounded them, mutated creatures exposed to the mako and driven past the point of nuts and galloon after galloon of toxic mako sludge, and just thinking about the pure insanity of the morning drew her attention to Strife again. He seemed to be waiting for something, though it was hard to tell what. Down below, the Corel Reactor looked lightly guarded.

"Is Shinra really this incredibly stupid?" Yuffie asked, after a moment. Strife obviously saw what she did, though he dismissed it with a shrug.

"Looks like we're going into a trap, actually. You might wanna turn back. Things are going to be dangerous."

"Well, duh. We're invading a mako reactor, Chocobo-head." Yuffie remained cool, nonetheless, all poise and bravado even if this was beyond anything she and the other ninja had even dared consider. In her mind this niggling doubt that sounded suspiciously like her father's voice cautioned that there was a difference between bravery and recklessness and that she had flung herself right from one to another, but then Yuffie thought about how her father had died and felt some of her exhilaration fade into something colder.

Strife must have seen the sudden change on her face and mistaken it for fear. "This isn't like Nibelheim. That reactor just spewed out monsters, and no one gave a damn one way or another about the town. But this one's more important to them. Newer, too. Shinra won't let it go without a fight."

"You're tellin' me this like I'm not already aware of it, Chocobo-head."

"Well, it's not my responsibility if things get ugly. Not this time, anyway. Just don't get in over your head." Cloud moved suddenly, lifting his enormous gleaming sword and placing it at his back before seeming to melt right into the wilderness. He left Yuffie scowling, wondering just who the hell he thought he was, telling her not to get in over his head when he was the one leading a single-man charge against the core of a damn mako reactor. Still, she crossed her arms and waited patiently. The gray sky started to lighten above.

A light yet bitterly-cold wind rose from the mountains above them and wafted down into the little alcove of trees and bushes where they waited, and even if it was just a breeze an otherworldly howl still rose in the peaks and valleys of Corel, doing its best at giving what wasn't a calm morning to begin with a threatening edge. Yuffie started reminiscing, stupidly enough. Now wasn't the place or the time to start getting all sentimental, but for a few moments the only thing she could think of was something her father had told her, way back when she'd only been a child. The eerie howling in the mornings winds that blew down from Da Chao were the spirits of the dead, he'd said, rising up in agony to lament the coming of the morning light, the only power capable of ending their nightly sojourns into the world of the living. For some reason, thinking of that here and now made her shiver, and Yuffie wanted to punch the old man for telling her something so intensely creepy.

The Capital City of Wutai was nothing more than ruins, these days. She wondered if her father was with those spirits now, howling and wailing and regretting all the way into the afterlife the resignation and defeat that had led all of them to their graves. She had more than one reason for wanting to punch the old man.

Behind her, a few ninja shifted into new places. They were drawing into ranks, tighter now, preparing for a concentrated charge. Breaching a mako reactor wasn't so simple as invading a small time Shinra fortress, but Yuffie didn't think now was the time to start thinking things through. They had Strife. He seemed to know what he was doing, though Yuffie couldn't be sure that he wasn't really just completely crazy. Not that it made a difference – sane men made really boring allies.

The first sliver of pinkish-orange light broke across the gray sky. Yuffie's grip on the conformer tightened, and the eerie winds died way too quick to be natural. Corel itself was taking one big deep gasping breath before things went up in smoke. Sure enough, Yuffie felt the shockwave even before seeing the explosion, then a ripple of green energy - an absurdly powerful materia spell - and a plume of fire erupted right from the Reactor's center, burning the afterimage into the lids of her eyes even when she blinked. The explosion set off smaller explosions in its wake, and the entire reactor entrance collapsed in a miasma of fire and spewing mako.

"How's that for a signal, huh?" Yuffie said aloud, lifting her hand as a warning to the rest of the ninja behind her. Not yet. Not yet -

- Black clad Shinra troops flooded the flat area around the reactor, all with swords strapped to their backs, flanked by regular troopers holding riot shields and rifles. This wasn't the usual Shinra idiot parade. Yuffie recognized those uniforms and felt excitement fade and freeze away into something cold and incensed. They were SOLDIERs, a whole flood of thirds and more seconds than she'd ever seen, backs turned to where her ninja waited and preparing to storm their own reactor and draw out whatever was inside.

_Now._

A rain of morning stars greeted the SOLDIERs and troopers, so pathetic a salvo they hardly noticed it. A second later a cavalcade of explosions ripped their ranks to pieces, and Yuffie wondered why, in all the years of the Wutain War, her father had never considered the simple tactic of tying mako grenades to the end of useless shuriken. She leapt from cover just as the SOLDIER units retaliated with materia blasts of their own. Yuffie went low and charged, her Ninja surrounding her and coming from all sides, all with grim determination written all over their faces. The blasts had taken out most of the troopers and their shields, but Yuffie knew grenades didn't do much to slow down SOLDIERs.

Materia did. Yuffie lit off a row of the strongest spells she could muster using her favorite, an ice materia, then her second favorite, a lightning. The combination was like a very sweet symphony, water all over the place from where SOLDIERs attempted to counter with fire, then lightning rippling out over water and causing a hell of a lot of trouble for anyone on the receiving end. Her father had never stooped to Shinra's level, always used his moldering old weapons and ninjitsu instead of materia, probably _knowing_ all the while that nothing stood against Shinra technology. Stubborn fucking old man, she thought, and plunged the sharp edge of her ninjitsu right into the forehead of a third class SOLDIER before he managed to chop her in half with his sword. It wasn't as big a weapon as she expected. None of them seemed to overcompensate as much as Chocobo-head.

They'd trained for this, and probably dreamed of it, too - fighting toe-to-toe with Shinra. Wutain Ninja were the best fighters in the world, bar none. Shinra monsters were nothing against them, but her ninja were also outnumbered by a force larger than any of them could have anticipated, easily taking them five to one. Yuffie grimly disemboweled another SOLDIER with the conformer then leapt backwards, whistling, warning the Wutain ninja to get the hell out of the way. Strife was right. Things were going to get ugly.

Three Wutain ninja came running, and the sickening heavy feeling of mako in the air went from cloying to almost crushing, before another invisible shockwave nearly threw her off her feet. A second later reality itself started rippling around them as her three best spell casters put hands to the glowing red summon materia, and Wutai's own trump card emerged, sinuous and blue-green, the scales of her snake-like body rippling in the half light of early dawn. Beautiful, like always, Wutai's guardian god Leviathan, a weapon that Yuffie knew even Shinra would have loved to have, particularly since so many of their troops had fallen to it during the war.

An immense roar split the morning in half. The SOLDIERs started scrambling, but they weren't fast enough, not even close. A thunderous tidal wave overcame their legs and swept most of them under, trapping them in a maelstrom of swirling water, swords, and allies. None of her fellow ninja were slow enough to be trapped in the spell, thankfully, though Yuffie herself came close enough and had to brace herself against a tree, watching and grinning the entire time, heedless to any real danger. The reactor sat above a scar in the mountainside with glowing mako far below, and as the summon's power grew in immensity the very land beneath it started to erode. This might have been overkill, but Yuffie was far from caring. Wutai had burned. She wanted Shinra to drown.

Its scales gleaming, the dragon twisted around for another attack, planning on wiping out what remained of Shinra resistance. In the blink of an eye, though, something new happened. Yuffie watched a thin sword split the guardian god's skull, seemingly appearing from nowhere. In a flash of silver and black it split apart, cloven in half like it was nothing, blood spewing all over the place now and mingling with the water. Yuffie stared in disbelieving horror as Leviathan fell to the ground, writhed, and disintegrated, the rest of the water flowing away into the canyon and disappearing along with the power of the summon spell.

"...I was right. You're quite a bit bolder than your father ever was."

Neither his voice nor his face had changed. Yuffie dreamed of it all the time, nightmares, surrounded by a burning throne room and watching as a tall, silver-haired SOLDIER killed her father and scornfully tossed the body onto the floor, then turned to her with a cold smile on his face, his eyes over bright with mako and his sword dripping with her father's blood. Childhood had ended on that day. Dreams of stealing materia and harassing Shinra from afar and slowly building up enough strength to topple them turned into the desire for blood and vengeance, to raw burning hatred as intense as the fires that had taken the entirety of Wutai away from her. Yuffie tossed bravado aside and succumbed to rage. Her own father probably wouldn't have recognized her.

The SOLDIER wasn't smiling now. His face was blank even if his eyes seemed to burn even brighter with mako than before, but his reflexes were just as quick. He dodged her first attack and countered with his sword. She blocked the blow and held her ground, casting a high-level lightning spell from her weapon. It was enough to make him leap back. He wasn't stupid enough to take it head on, SOLDIER or not. She dove after him, parrying blow after blow after blow, satisfied to see him on the offensive, grim concentration on his face. Then he cast a spell that she barely managed to block with her conformer, though the raw energy blasted Yuffie backwards. She twisted in midair, managed to avoid his sword, and landed, barely managing to get one foot underneath her in time. He watched her with those gleaming inhuman eyes, speechlessly, then suddenly thrust his hand outwards. He held a small green materia orb in one hand and a spell exploded from it, but it wasn't aimed at her.

It was probably a good thing, because Yuffie watched it strike the reactor head-on, creating a rippling wave of explosions, just like Cloud's signal. The Reactor couldn't sustain a third blast, not after Cloud, and Leviathan. It was a high-level spell, Flare, maybe even Ultima, though Yuffie was certain nothing that resembled a human being could just hold a materia in their hand and cast one of those like it was nothing. He could, somehow. The reactor gave way, its supports crumbling, its inner core suddenly blowing sky high with mako, and fire raining down all around them. Yuffie stared in bewilderment as Shinra's reactor fell to ruins.

"You-"

"-Strife met a little more resistance inside than he expected. I don't think that will kill him, though," the silver-haired man said, after a moment, looking towards the wreckage. The reactor finally gave way, sending a blast of mako energy all around them that nauseated Yuffie almost immediately, though through some miracle she managed to stay upright. It collapsed, tumbling right down into the scar in the mountainside, probably going the same way as the Nibel Reactor. It disappeared into the crevasse, falling downwards into the Lifestream below and probably taking Chocobo-head with it.

"It's enough to send a message though, isn't it? This reactor's worthless. It can be spared." The silver-haired man said, still not even bothering to look at her. He made little sense. He wasn't having a conversation with her, she knew that much, and the fact that he seemed to so casually disregard the fact that she was facing him set off another near blinding explosion of rage inside of her. Yuffie charged.

Maybe she should have listened to her father. He'd learned lessons about restraint and caution the hard way, and Yuffie realized in the blink of an eye that the margin of error here was far too slim for her to learn those same lessons. Effortlessly, the SOLDIER flicked around his blade and Yuffie watched cold steel go right through her midsection and felt it emerge from her back. Shards of her conformer, shattered into probably a thousand pieces by a futile attempt to block his blow splintered against her skin, tearing away flesh and cutting to the bone. Her palms split on the blade as soon as she put her hands to it, stupidly and futilely attempting to pull it out. It became very hard to breathe a second later, and Yuffie's vision began to blur.

"The time for toying around is past," the silver-haired man said, now looking directly at her, his blade like an extension of his own arm. He twisted it just a bit, and Yuffie tasted blood in her mouth. "...I've made too many exceptions, and I've spared too many of you fools. I don't think I've made my intentions clear enough."

He flicked Yuffie off the end of the blade in the same way he'd done to her father, only this time someone caught her a second later before she hit the ground. The other Wutain Ninja began charging at him, rage overcoming their common sense, when they should have acted like cowards and ran instead, and in a matter of moments they too were dying on his blade until there was no one left to charge. Yuffie saw a pair of bright blue eyes looking down at her while he held a restore materia, casting it with his bare hand just like the other SOLDIER. He kept on casting it, too, then savagely tossed it aside and pulling out another one. It was a sweet effort, more than she expected from anyone, but Yuffie wanted him to stop and listen. The spells weren't doing much.

"Yuffie… _DAMN IT_!" Weird. He didn't make it sound like they'd known one another for less than twenty hours, and for that reason, Yuffie choked and forced words instead of blood out of her mouth, feeling she at least owed him an explanation.

"It was _him_," she muttered, trying to explain how stupid she was and failing to gather enough breath to do so. "...He... he killed…"

"It's fine. I know." Chocobo-head wasn't really used to comforting people much, she guessed, but despite the fact that he had cut her off when she'd made such an effort to speak, he still laid her down gently even despite his inhuman strength and put his hand over hers for a moment. The look on his face was more kind than cruel, not like those other SOLDIERs. When he looked up, though, she could almost sense his rage.

"Sephiroth!"

So that was his name. Yuffie had known it before. She'd seen it in the Shinra papers. Still, hearing Cloud say in that way somehow made it real. It was really obvious that he knew the other man and probably hated him in the same intensely personal way she did. Her vision started to blur again.

"What did you expect, Cloud? Do you think anything has changed?" Listening to him now, Yuffie realized his voice wasn't really like what she expected. He didn't sound smug. He didn't sound satisfied. He didn't sound happy in the slightest, only cold and completely dead. She hated him for it even more, even when Yuffie had never thought it was possible to hate him more than she already did.

"Why did you save Zack and me? Why did you save Aerith? What the _hell_ are you doing now?"

"Only what's necessary."

"Why are you just going along with them?"

"Because it's the way things should be, Cloud."

The air went very cold, but Yuffie knew the feeling was just her. Blood, blood all over the place, warm and gushing, yet still very, very cold. Didn't make sense. Probably didn't need to make sense, now that the entire world was starting to blur and tilt around her. Only their voices seemed clear, but distant – like she was steadily drifting away from them. Cloud's voice came out flat and accusing a moment later.

"Why believe a lie, Sephiroth? You have to know by now you're not an Ancient. You-"

"-I understand things very clearly. Obviously you don't. Zack continues to fight because he doesn't know any better, but you have to know your every move so far has played right into their plans."

Yuffie didn't know what the hell they were talking about. The wind was picking up, though, and she kept on thinking of her father's words, the spirits of the dead, the morning... he was wrong about nearly everything, because all Yuffie could hear right now was the sound of everything in the world dying. Not just her. And it was all going black instead of white - fitting, she'd always thought it'd all end in shadow, that everyone who said you just had to wait for that bright light when things fell to pieces was full of shit.

"Their plans? And what about you? Are you just-"

"- A puppet? No. Don't assume everyone has the same weaknesses you do, or you'll underestimate everything." Sephiroth's voice had changed. She didn't have to see his face to know his expression wasn't pleasant. "Did you actually pity me, Cloud? I heard your voice, just once... amidst all of their madness, even, though I could hardly believe what I was hearing. What made you intervene on my behalf?"

No response. Yuffie wanted to yell at Chocobo-head, somehow. _Don't be an idiot. Don't listen to him. It's really obvious he's just fucking with you_. Too late. Too much blood and her throat was constricting, her lungs no longer working, her breathing more choking and coughing than inhaling and exhaling.

"...I think I know. A part of you will always cling to me, just like a part of you will never be able to think for itself. No matter what else changes about the world, you never do. You're still a pathetic failure, and you're still better off letting others lead you around than following your own path." Sephiroth paused to let it sink in, and she could almost imagine the smirk on his face at the final rejoinder. "It won't just be Aerith and Zack this time. I'll take everything from you."

But Cloud just brushed it off like it was nothing, and Yuffie felt a grim respect for him, Chocobo-headed though he was. "You already did once, and I survived the first time."

He moved from Yuffie's side almost soundlessly, but a moment later she heard his knees hit the ground. She forced her eyes open and saw only swirls of red and black, but she thought she could make out the dim shape of Cloud hunched over and clutching his head, trembling all over. Yuffie whispered something in his direction, some kind of warning that came out inaudible, but in a moment of clarity she saw Sephiroth was still on his feet - he'd frozen, too, and she watched as he took a step back and fell to one knee, clutching his head. She could see visible decay suddenly, not just her own imagination - the seemingly invincible SOLDIER's skin cracking and sloughing like it was diseased, and rapidly, too, spreading up his neck while he coughed and mako came out. Whatever was happening... whatever the two of them had on their side... clearly didn't want them killing each other.

...didn't really matter. A counter attack came from somewhere. A lion with a flaming tail. _Fucking_ elders at Cosmo Canyon, sending out their own warriors, probably knowing Yuffie was in over her head. Fair enough, she probably was. She saw Cloud get back to his feet and turn towards her with wide eyes. Sephiroth was gone, and so was her chance at revenge. Cloud's expression still seemed a little weird for someone she'd just met, but for a SOLDIER, maybe he was a good guy.

"_Yuffie!" _

Too late, though. Far too late. Numbness overcame her, and she couldn't move. Stringing thoughts together became an effort. It was all screwed up, though, not at all what she'd imagined, enough to think that maybe she should have just stuck with thieving materia and harassing travelers. Maybe that would have been more productive. Maybe her father's resignation really had been wisdom. Yuffie smiled wryly and closed her eyes, realizing that after a pitifully short lifetime of recklessly throwing herself at Shinra and hunting the man who had slain her father, she had nothing to show for it but dying in the dirt and watching everything turn to shadows.

**

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**

Rufus didn't have to see Aerith's face to know the meaning of her sudden silence. It was apparent to him, too. A horrific scene stretched out before them, decay and corruption spread across a twisted and surreal nightmare. A tense, strained couple of seconds passed by, and Rufus turned to look back at her. Aerith was pale.

Behind them, the group of white-clad Shinra scientists and MPs stood blinking, no one certain what to say or do. Even they sensed the wrongness in the situation, but you didn't have to be clever to spot the problem.

"I can't hear their voices." Aerith said, finally.

He hadn't pictured the City of the Ancients like this, anyway. Perhaps it had been sealed for thousands of years on the Northern Continent, but the decay and dust of years didn't account for the utter devastation spread before them. What had once been white cobblestone pathways were now stained with an oozing gray-black slime that seeped from the crevasses between the stones. The forking roads and pathways in the city led to even more decay, the hollowed out skeletons of houses that had long since burnt in some kind of terrible fire and were now casting twisted shadows in the moon light. In the very center of the city a deadened and crumbling ruin awaited, and it was there that Aerith's attention was drawn. She started on her way, paused, then continued without a word.

Behind him, Heidegger scoffed, and Scarlett let out a cackle.

"Not so grand now, is it? This looks even worse than the most godforsaken slum in Midgar."

Rufus didn't particularly enjoy traveling with idiots, but they were entrenched idiots that he couldn't fire without political fallout, so he ignored the two buffoons and followed after Aerith. One of the scientists hesitated.

"Mr. President. I can't attest to the safety of this-"

"-it isn't any worse than reactor sludge," Rufus snapped, then reconsidered. "Is it?"

"This is definitely decaying Lifestream. It's not like the sludge that comes out of the reactors." Another of the scientists had out a small instrument and was waving it over the ground, and even from where he stood Rufus saw its readings were all in the red. "It's never been processed and converted into mako energy."

"What's that even mean?" Heidegger asked. The man was literally as stupid as a pile of bricks.

"It means it's dying all on its own. We're not responsible for this." Rufus filled in, and he started after Aerith again while everyone else digested his words. No - you didn't need to be a genius to realize how chilling those implications were. Rufus didn't like any of this, was even starting to think that stepping into his father's shoes and taking the reigns had been a bad idea from the very start. Aerith disappeared into the center building and he followed, calling out.

"Hey! You're not planning on escaping, are you?" He didn't put it past her, but when the scientists came with their torches, they discovered a one way street. A path through dead twisted trees led to a lake in and a small house at the shore, and Rufus fought to keep from gagging. A heavy, metallic stench not unlike blood rose from the water, and when he grabbed a torch from the nearest scientist and looked down, he saw it was laced with black bile, clearly more detritus from decaying Lifestream. Even Scarlett and Heidegger looked uncertain now, dimwitted though they were.

The small house at the edge of the lake hid a path downwards, with stairs of glass. Rufus saw some of the others behind him hesitate, and Heidegger threw in the towel entirely, turning to walk the other direction. Not that it mattered - unafraid and yet unsettled all the while, Rufus started down the stairs, discomfited by the splinters and hairline cracks he saw in the glass. He barely breathed until he reached the bottom, then exhaled and looked around at what appeared to be a castle in the underground. It bore the visible signs of decay like the rest of the city - its towers had long since crumbled and fell to pieces, and were now just a shadow of what must have been something magnificent, long ago. Rufus passed through the ruins until he came to more deadened water and found Aerith, kneeling on an altar within the lake.

It took him some time to clamber up to the altar, and once there he paused, looking around in consternation, then back down at Aerith. "Is saying a prayer really going to help this?"

Aerith raised her eyes after a moment, her expression grimmer than he'd ever seen it. "I can't hear their voices. They won't respond to me, not a single one. Not even my mother."

"I thought the Cetra were supposed to be Guardians, but this place looks far worse than anything my father's reactors are responsible for," Rufus pointed out, not sure whether he was trying to rub it in or just pointing out the obvious, thinking all the while of what Aerith had said about the Promised Land. She remained silent, before finally getting to her feet, looking uncertain.

"So? Do you have the answers you came here for?" Rufus asked. It came out borderline impatiently, but he was really growing rather agitated by their surroundings. He wasn't the only one. The MPs and scientists were nervously muttering amongst themselves. Surprising him, Aerith managed a wan smile.

"I do." And she had never managed to look as completely alone as she did now, although the look faded swiftly. It occurred to Rufus that whatever her wishes were, she had probably just been presented with final and irrevocable proof that her ancestors had abandoned her completely. He knew that much, even with only half of an understanding of the situation. Aerith sounded tired and a little wry, like she'd finally embraced a cloying truth she had long anticipated. "...It's worse than I thought."

Rufus said nothing for a few moments, before finally he couldn't contain any of his questions. "So now what? What are they planning? What about Sephiroth, and where did he come from? And what do you plan on doing, anyway?"

But the calm resolution on Aerith's face seemed to say it all, that even if she didn't have the answers to the questions, she had decided on her own course of action. "I don't know where Sephiroth came from, but he's just their weapon. I'm worried that he's manipulating them, maybe... but he's not the cause of this."

"So it is the Cetra. He's just their tool. Well, who am I to complain? If he's working for the Cetra, it means they've given me the best kind of gift imaginable. He could subjugate the entire world if he wanted, through fear alone. I won't have to waste money, not like my father always did. And I have the added assurance of knowing the Ancients themselves are on my side."

Aerith just looked at him, her expression unreadable. "...They've turned against every living thing. The planet is dying."

"So they've said for years. The hippies at Cosmo Canyon, the environmentalists, every Shinra detractor, AVALANCHE… all of them. It's still here, though." Still, something in Rufus waited for the other shoe to drop.

"The Planet is utterly terrified, more so than I've ever seen it. Whatever the Planet wants, the Cetra have forgotten. It's weak, too, almost pitifully weak... diseased, I'd say. It has maybe a year to live, if even that."

The scientists, MPs, and Rufus all stared at Aerith. Scarlett scoffed and walked away, muttering about how preposterous this was, and Rufus just stood, looking at her doubtfully and deciding he liked Aerith better when she was being joking and irreverent with him. Such an uncharacteristically serious pronouncement coming from her just didn't seem right, but his mind kept on sifting through images of dead and decaying Lifestream, untouched by Shinra's reactors, evaporating due to no process controllable by humans. It was out of their control, entirely so, and the very thought began to sink in and stir something in his insides. Neither excitement nor dread fully accounted for what he felt. Aerith looked at him for a moment and smiled sadly.

"I'm probably not very useful to you as the last Ancient... the Cetra are guardians of what you'd think of as the Promised Land, but the way they are now... I won't be able to lead anyone there, least of all myself."

Rufus let that sink in, and decided he had nothing to say about it. "...Just what can you do, anyway?"

The calm resolve on Aerith's face didn't change. "No matter what happens this time, I have no choice but to go against their wishes."

**

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1. Next chapter: well, there's not going to be a nine month gap this time. My "hiatus" is officially over… thank you, anyone that's still reading this story after all this time, and like always, thanks to everyone who has reviewed past chapters, everyone who reviews this one, and all the people who have placed this on their favorites and alerts list.

2. I might have already mentioned this in the notes section of another chapter, but I frequently put short status updates in my profile, or at least reminders that I haven't died, forgotten about this story, or flat out quit writing it. At this point, I'm probably being overly optimistic, but now that I have time to write again I will now try to get back to bi-weekly or twice-a-month updates.

**PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE LEAVE REVIEWS** if you do you'll be my hero


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